


Of Unknown Origins

by strangegoingson



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adoption, Anxiety Attacks, Eating Disorders, Extremis, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Tony, M/M, Palladium Poisoning, Past Child Abuse, Red Room, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-30 22:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangegoingson/pseuds/strangegoingson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark was taken from America when he was three years old; he didn't remember life there enough appreciate it or not. Anton, recently escaped Red Room operative, arrived there when he was thirteen, and he definitely did not appreciate being dragged to America, no matter that Natasha insisted things would be better there. Sure, he went to school and people weren't trying to kill him, at least not at first, but he'd really rather just do as his classmates jeered and go back to Russia. </p><p>America wasn't for everybody, but maybe, with a bit of doing, he could get used to being there. Now if only he didn't keep nearly getting himself killed in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: There is a period where a character has a bit of an eating disorder in the first chapter. Child abuse is mentioned throughout the story, and there are some flashbacks to it. There are also mentions of torture and some violence later on in the story. If there's anything I missed, please tell me.

Last night, Anton had dreamed of the Red Room. He dreamed of it almost every night, to tell the truth, of waking up in a puddle of broken glass and cryogenic fluid to see Natasha above him, a man with a bow behind her, telling him, “Time to go, Anton.”

He dreamed of begging to take Yakov, only for her to tell him, “Maybe later.” Well, she said they would return when they were stronger, but that basically boiled down to maybe later. Then, he led them out of the Red Room from the vents—Yakov had shown him the way—and once outside the man led them to a helicopter. The helicopter had morphed into a plane, and suddenly another man was sitting next to him, writing down endless letters on endless sheets of paper, as if he wasn’t aware of Anton and Natasha arguing next to him.

He always woke up when she smacked him. He rubbed his cheek, still feeling the phantom pain, although the bruise had faded days ago. He’d been awake for two weeks now, longer than ever before. His previous record was four days, when he had been hidden particularly well during a training exercise and it had taken Yakov longer than usual to find him. He’d been given candy after that.

Natasha was always saying, “He’s the Winter Soldier, Anton, and he won’t hesitate to kill you in an instant if he’s given the order,” but he remembered Yakov taking just a bit longer to return to base so they could talk before being put back into cryogenic freezing. That was the best part of training, when he’d been found and released from his bonds and Yakov let him ride on his back as they slowly made their way through the snow.

There wasn’t any snow in America. Clint always said there would be in the winter, but winter wasn’t for months. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be in America for months; he’d been there for two weeks and it wasn’t all that great. He sat in a small, windowless room furnished only with a bed and a small table, reading the same books over and over again. They weren’t even in Russian. He knew some of the words, but for most of them he had to keep flipping through the dictionary Agent Coulson had given him. Not exactly prime entertainment.

Natasha hadn’t been around, either. Clint said that they were making sure she wasn’t going to figure out their secrets and run back to Russia; Anton figured they just wanted to interrogate her and figure out all they could about the Red Room.

No one interrogated him. They gave him an IQ test and gaped over him for a bit, asked him a few questions about the Winter Soldier, and sent him off to this glorified prison cell when his answers weren’t satisfactory. Clint came by sometimes, and that was fun, but otherwise he did nothing at all.

He’d rather have been in Russia. At least there it was interesting. He wanted to get his hands on something, but whenever he tried to fiddle with the wiring alarms went off and he got dragged before Agent Coulson, who sighed and rubbed his temples and told him to be patient, his expression more and more exasperated and tired each time.

He sighed and threw himself on the bed. “I’m bored,” he complained to the camera above him. He doubted whoever was watching spoke Russian, but whatever. He huffed grumpily and rolled himself up in the multitudes of blankets he had gathered. “I’m bored, bored, _booooorreeeed_.”

Anton gave the papers sitting on the table a considering look. He had a birth certificate and a passport and a visa and everything. He could probably just leave. The door was locked, but he knew a fast way out.

After a few minutes of fiddling with the wires to the electronic lock and listening to the alarm blare incessantly, Anton found himself being dragged to Agent Coulson’s office once again.

“Anton, do that one more time and I will tase you and do my work in peace while you drool on the carpet,” Coulson said.

Anton grinned unapologetically. “Maybe if you didn’t lock me up, I wouldn’t bother you.”

Coulson sighed and shook his head. “Part of me wants to make sure you get an introduction to 21st century America—not that we didn’t already have enough of a demand for that recently without adding in Russian spies from the Soviet era—but the rest of me is all too glad to see you go.”

Anton caught the key that Agent Coulson tossed at him automatically. “The keys to your house,” Coulson said. “We’ve found a safehouse in the district of a decent public school. You and Agent Romanov will be placed there. You will attend the local school while she works for SHIELD. She had agreed to ensure you will be taken care of when she is on long-term assignments. If you require anything, I have taken the liberty of buying you a cell phone with numbers for Clint’s phone, my office, and my phone.” The phone he slid across the desk, leaving Anton to step forward and pick it up. As he did, Coulson looked at him piercingly and repeated, “Anything. If you need it, just call.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Anton only gave the phone a brief look, enough to see that it was one of the better phones SHIELD gave out, before slipping it into his pocket. He’d take a closer look later. It might have been one of SHIELD’s good phones, but he could make it better given a couple hours and a screwdriver. The Red Room hadn’t kept him around for nothing.

“If you’ll step outside, I’ve assigned someone to bring you and Agent Romanov to your house,” Coulson said. He broke formality to give Anton a brief yet warm smile. “I assure you, it’s a very nice house in an excellent location. The Stark family sponsored the purchase.”

He paused mid-way through reaching for the doorknob, feeling for a moment that he should protest being given a Stark house. Starks were bad. You could even go so far as to call them evil. Everyone said so. He shuddered, remembering fists pounding on the dinner table and rattling the dishes as a voice fueled by anger and vodka ranted on the many crimes of the Stark family.

_They made their money on the blood and lives of children like you, boy, and don’t you forget it. Thieves, liars, and murderers—not a good thing ever came from a Stark!_

He could feel Coulson’s eyes boring into the back of his head, but Anton but kept his mouth shut and stepped into the hall.

A hand landed on his head and viciously ruffled his hair the moment the door closed behind him. “How’s it hanging, short stuff?” Clint grinned down at him.

Anton glowered back and shoved Clint’s arm away as he said the first new phrase he’d learned upon arriving in America. “Fuck you!”

Clint just laughed and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “You’re adorable. Grow a few feet and maybe you could scare a puppy. Now come on, Coulson and I picked this place out just for you guys. I made sure it had the best entertainment system out of all of them, and he made sure it had good defenses.”

He continued to talk about the house as they walked to the parking lot. Clint knew some Russian, but not a lot, so he always spoke in English with Anton. He understood well enough. Natasha said he must have been taught by someone, but he couldn’t remember ever not knowing English. Sometimes, when a training exercise required secrecy, he would speak in English with Yakov, but the man hadn’t taught him. He just knew.

Natasha was waiting for them at Clint’s car, some unobtrusive little black thing with tinted windows that doesn’t look like something he’d own at all. “It’s a company car,” Clint said, as if guessing at his thoughts. “I drive this, SHIELD foots the bills, it all works out.”

Conversation was stifled on the drive there. It was hard to talk freely with a Russian assassin sharpening her knives a few feet away from him, especially when she said, “Anton, you’ve giving me a headache,” whenever he tried to talk.

So Natasha wasn’t exactly a peach to be around. That was nothing new. It didn’t matter much, since she got out the moment the car stopped, and was nowhere to be found by the time Clint and Anton reached the door. Clint dropped a suitcase just inside. “That’s stuff for you. SHIELD paid, so don’t worry about paying anyone back. Now come on, let me show you your room. And, uh, sorry in advance.”

When he opened the door, Anton understood the apology. Captain America stared out at him from the bedroom wall, saluting and smiling proudly. Clint grimaced. “Yeah, sorry you get stuck with Mr. Judgmental over here, but this place was already decked out for another agent and her son. He was a few years younger than you, and kids love Captain America when they’re that age. Personally he gives me the creeps, but Coulson loves the guy.”

The bed had Captain America sheets. There were Captain America action figures in the bookshelves, proudly displayed in front of a large collection of Captain America comics. A child-sized shield even leaned against the wall. Apparently, he had been given no choice but to learn to like Captain America.

“Is this some new kind of indoctrination?” he asked. “Surround the Russian spy with symbols of America so he’ll learn to love the country? Sneaky. Not very effective though.”

Clint snickered. “Who knows, maybe with this guy staring down at you, you’ll be pressured into being loyal. I don’t think I’d stand up well against that stare for long. Still, at least you’ve got something to entertain you. I mean, what are you, twelve, thirteen?”

He shrugged. “Something like that.”

Clint gave him a serious look. “And how long have you been thirteen?”

“A while?”

Clint stared at him seriously for a few moments longer before bursting out laughing. “Stop looking so confused, I’m just playing with you. You wouldn’t get the joke. If anyone tells you to read something called _Twilight_ , though, tell them that shit sucks donkey balls.”

“Clint.” Natasha reappeared in the doorway. “Stop teaching him foul language. I know it was you who taught him what ‘fuck you’ meant.”

“Aw, come on, it’s hilarious,” Clint ruffled Anton’s hair roughly. “Just listen to the baby-faced little bastard.”

Natasha gave him an unamused look and turned on her heel. The door to the master bedroom slammed behind her, making them both wince. “I think that’s my sign to make myself scarce. Have fun at school, short stuff.”

They left him to figure out where the school was on his own, but he was used to that. It wasn’t far anyways, so he just followed the crowd of kids his age until he found the one on the papers he had been given. He ended up sitting in a registration office for most of the day, sitting with a woman who didn’t speak Russian and didn’t have a sense of humor.

They told him he had to learn a foreign language as some kind of graduation requirement—to get into a good high school, they told him. “I already know one,” he said in Russian, as always.

The woman gave him a stern, uncomprehending look. “English Second Language, I think,” she said.

In the English Second Language class, they insisted he speak in English, and when he didn’t patronizingly said, “In English, Anton,” and acted like they couldn’t hear him at all. So instead, he just didn’t speak. He sat in the back of the class and drew designs for hundreds of little robots, no matter if the teacher called on him or not, thinking up snarky answers but never actually saying them. In his other classes, he did everything in Russian. Papers, tests, homework, oral presentations—everything. He went weeks without speaking a word in English. When they sent home grades, his a solid row of F’s to be signed by a parent/guardian, he just forged Natasha’s signature and sent it back in.

His classmates and teachers all thought he was stupid. They shoved him in the hallway and hissed, “Go back to Russia.” He’d gotten worse bruises while playing with Yakov, and got his revenge well enough when he rigged their lockers with booby traps, so he bit his tongue and didn’t say anything to them or about them. He never said he’d rather be in Russia than in America, where he had never wanted to go, where Natasha had dragged him.

The other students didn’t matter, anyways. He had an entire notebook full of plans to prove them wrong.

When it came time for lunch each day, he bought a cookie, an apple, and a sandwich, because they—they being the medics at SHIELD that loved to fuss over his health—said that he had to buy at least three items. He alternated between eating the apple and the sandwich each day, and saved the cookie for later. He was hungry, but that was good. He didn’t tell anyone, but he missed Russia, and late at night with the hunger gnawing at his insides, it was easy to pretend he was there, hiding somewhere cold and dark and waiting for Yakov to find him and finish the exercise. He was used to hunger; it made him feel like everything was normal, like at any moment the scientists would grab him by the arm and shove him back into cryogenic freezing, so that when he woke up his memories would be fuzzy and nothing much would matter. Natasha was supposed to make sure he was eating, but she wasn’t home much, and when she was he just told her he ate a lot at school and she let it be.

It was good. He drew a lot of robots, and he went to bed hungry and woke up the same, and he could press on the bruises given to him by bullies and pretend they’d been given to him by the other operatives at the Red Room. Sometimes, when he woke up fresh from a dream, he could even think for a few moments that Yakov was about to walk in the door and declare, “Found you!” and give him candy for being so good while he waited.

Then he was called to the dean’s office. He was in a meeting, so Anton was left waiting with a blond man that kept staring at him. The Russian rose to his lips as easy as breathing. “Hey, my eyes are up here, pedophile.”

The man was so shocked he dropped his pencils. “Sorry! I’m so sorry!”

He blathered on a bit more, but Anton was grinning. “You speak Russian!”

“I’ve picked bits up,” the man said, slow and rough but understandable. “I’m sorry, I was—here.”

He turned his notebook around so Anton could see. “It’s me,” he said, running his eyes over the figure defiantly sprawled in an office chair too small to contain his ire. A crown was sketched lightly, perched at an arrogant angle on his head.

“You looked like a troublemaker,” the man said, in English, “like you were proud of what you’d done to land in here and would do it again if given the chance.”

Anton grinned and held out a hand as he offered the name SHIELD had given him. “Anton Romanov.” 

“Steve Rogers.” Oddly enough, the name was familiar. Anton narrowed his eyes at the man’s face, which, now that he gave it some thought, was also familiar. “I’m here for a meeting.”

“Well, let’s just say I’m not here to be commended for being an excellent student,” Anton said.

Rogers grinned, an embarrassed flush rising to his cheeks. “I only understood about half of that.”

Anton repeated it in English as the office door opened. “Now if only you’d do that in your classes.” He jerked around and stared at the principal.

“Agent Coulson?” he exclaimed as Rogers did the same.

The man smiled down at them both. “Perhaps this would be a conversation best had in my office.

“Well, that explains why I was told to come to a public school,” Rogers said. “It’s good to see you, Agent.”

Anton ignored Rogers to point accusingly at Coulson. “Are you here to check up on me?”

“There are many reason why I am here, and you are one of them. The rest are none of your business.”

“And you’re SHIELD?” Anton demanded, turning to Rogers. That would explain why he looked so familiar, at least.

“Not exactly. You  might know him better as Captain America,” Phil said.

Oh. Well, it did kind of look like the guy in the comics, if he squinted a bit and turned his head to the side. “Funny, he doesn’t look like a dick.” He liked the Captain well enough, but that was so worth the looks on their faces.

“Captain Rogers was unfrozen recently,” Coulson continued tersely. “A situation rather similar to yours, really. I thought it would be prudent to introduce you, seeing as SHIELD plans to partner him with Agent Romanov on some missions. Captain, if you would wait outside for a moment, I need to have a quick discussion with Anton before we begin our meeting.”

As Rogers closed the door behind him, Phil said, “I have Agent Romanov on the line.”

Anton groaned, but unfortunately was unable to block out the sound of Natasha saying, “Agent Coulson. Is this about the op?”

“The op was fine. I’m here to discuss Anton. We’ve noticed that he’s been having trouble adjusting to school. He refuses to speak or write in anything but Russian, and he hasn’t been eating. Has it been the same at home?”

“We only speak Russian at the safe house, and he said he’d been eating a lot at school so he wasn’t hungry,” she reported.

“The doctors said three full meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Have you been getting any of that?” he asked Anton.

“Lunch.” He kept the word short and sharp, and refused to look at Coulson, instead staring down at his crossed arms.

“Half a sandwich or an apple doesn’t count,” Coulson said.

“And a cookie,” Anton said.

Coulson’s eyes sharpened. “Yes. The cookie. Can you explain that for me?”

“The cookie,” Natasha repeated.

Anton silently begged the man not to tell her, but no such luck. “Every lunch, Anton buys a cookie only to put it in his pocket and presumably take it home. I’ve been wondering why.”

She was going to tell Coulson. Anton considered letting her, just so no one would ask him, but he liked Coulson. He didn’t need to be bothered with every little thing that was wrong in Anton’s head. Natasha had a knack for making things sound infinitely more pathetic than they really were.

“No,” he said, and that was it.

“Alright,” Coulson said, leaning back in his chair. “But Anton, I want you to talk about this with your therapist.”

Ugh. The therapist. All they ever did was sit around and play stupid games and draw stupid pictures. “What if I can’t?”

Coulson was smiling, but his eyes seemed incredibly sad. “At least consider it. Thank you, Anton. You can go back to class.”

The door shut behind him, but he remained behind a few moments longer. “Agent Romanov,” he heard Coulson say, his voice much harsher than it had been moments before. “I’m giving you fair warning. We decided it was best to let Anton stay with you because you’re an adult he’s familiar with, but you need to step up to the plate. If we don’t see improvement, Anton’s therapist is going to recommend moving him to a new home. SHIELD doesn’t want to place him in a foster home, but we will if that is what will ensure his well-being, no matter what security measures we have to put in place.”

Silence, but for the background static of the phone, and then, “I’m all he has, Coulson.”

Coulson sighed. “Right now? I don’t think he even knows he has you.”

***

Anton expected that his therapist would ask about the cookie the moment he walked in, but of course she didn’t. They went through the usual question of how his day was, and then she had him draw some kind of picture of everything he’d felt throughout his life. He didn’t, of course; he had a feeling that would be too depressing to even think about. It usually went that way. She’d ask something, he’d refuse to answer, she’d suggest something, he’d refuse to do it, and then they’d move onto something completely stupid. In this case, she pulled out a small, plastic container. The lid, when removed, revealed a wand with a small hoop on the end.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“These are bubbles.” She blew into the wand, sending bubbles flying through the air. When he poked them, they popped quietly. He set about poking them as quickly as possible, grinning all the while, and she continued to send bubbles raining down on him.

“Now, I want you to blow one really big bubble,” she said, handing him the wand. When he exhaled, a small flurry of bubbles erupted. “Slowly now. Breath in deeply from the stomach, then breath out slowly. One more time. Just like that. Keep going.”

Slowly, he mastered the technique, and each time he breathed there was only one large bubble. “Excellent bubble breaths. Now, whenever you get upset, angry, anxious, or anything like that, I want you to remember bubble breaths, alright? Because when you’re upset, your brain wants more air, but your lungs are breathing too busy being upset to help out the brain. Bubble breaths help your lungs and heart calm down so that the brain can get what it needs. If you ever need to calm down, just remember this. It’ll help.”

She talked to him like he was a baby, but she was nice enough. “You can keep the bubbles,” she said. “Now, is there anything you wanted to talk about?”

He shrugged. “Agent Coulson said I should talk about school stuff.”

“Do you want to?”

Again, he shrugged. “Not really.”

“Do you need to?”

“Maybe.”

Her smile was gentle and sweet. “He said you’ve been having troubles at school recently.”

“They all speak English and I speak Russian,” he said.

“It’s a big change, huh?” she said. He picked idly at his shoelace. “Would it help if you started speaking it outside of school? We could speak English together, or you could ask someone at home to help you.”

“Home would be better,” he said. Natasha was never home, and she wouldn’t get the memo anyways.

“Alright. So, for next time you can work on that, and we can talk about how you’re doing next time. Does that sound good?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

“Great. I’ll see you in two weeks, Anton. Take a doughnut before you go!”

He left the room quickly, but made certain to grab a snack on his way out. Yeah, his therapist was pretty nice. He would’ve liked to go without one, but if he had to have one at least she was fun.

Dinner was waiting for him when he got home, with a note from Coulson simply saying, “Eat me.” He didn’t recognize the dish, but it was good when he reheated it in the microwave. Under the bowl, he unearthed a slip of paper that showed the recipe when unfolded. Clint and Coulson had been doing that, recently. He had a collection of recipes from them growing in a bowl on his desk. That was only when they were busy, though. Whenever they could, the two of them liked to take him out for dinner, showing him the wonders of the various types of foods that could be found in New York. Once in a while, upon waking up, he could even find one or both of them in his kitchen, making breakfast.

Natasha was almost never there, of course. He’d last seen her a few days ago, when she’d wandered in to give him money for groceries before wandering out again on another SHIELD op. When she was home, they usually ate in silence, like they always had at the Red Room. Eating out with Clint and Coulson was much more fun, with Clint’s boisterous laughter and Coulson’s softer chuckles. They got a lot of stares, but it was fun, which was more than he could say for a lot of the time he was at home. All three of them were working at the moment, though, Clint on his own minor op and Coulson and Natasha working together on a larger one.

At this rate, he probably talked more with his therapist than he did with Natasha. He wasn’t even sure why she saved him in the first place. They’d gotten along well enough, and she’d shown a certain protective streak over him, but other than that they’d never talked at the Red Room. He repaired the Widow’s Bite for her, and sometimes they were put in exercises together, but not often. He’d always found her a bit terrifying, really, like she was about to stab him in the neck or something. It had been known to happen. He got the feeling that she thought he was a childish and stupid annoyance, and he had learned over the years that it was better to stay out of the way of people who thought that way.

Staying out of her way was the easiest way to ensure that they were both happy. And he was happy, actually. He made food to remind himself of Russia instead of relying on the hunger of the Red Room, and as a bonus he couldn’t see his ribs in the mirror anymore.

Coulson said he was proud of him. It might have been a childish reaction, but after that Anton smiled for days.

When Natasha did show up for longer than a day, it was generally to make sure he was still in shape. They’d go to the exercise room in the back of the house and she’d spar with him, yelling out, “Too sloppy,” or “Too slow,” or “Again.” The bruises then took up half his body; it was like being back in the Red Room again. They made him smile proudly, but his therapist always frowned when he came to her with bruises blooming all down his arms. When he showed up with one on his face, she declared, “We’re going to pay a game.”

She took out a box of blocks and distributed them evenly between the two of them. “Now, this game is called Feelings Tower. You take a block and put it down on top of the previous one, each time saying something that makes you angry, sad, or anxious. Here, I’ll start. It makes me angry when . . . my husband forgets to put down the toilet seat.”

When she put down a block between them, he set another on top of it. “I feel angry when Natasha leaves her dirty dishes on the table for me to clean up.”

It started out with stupid things, mostly. She’d say, “I feel anxious when I dream about going to work without my pants on,” and he’d say, “I felt sad when Darth Vader died in the last Star Wars movie.” After one of them said something, they’d talk about it for a bit before moving on. It was interesting. At least if he had to share something about himself, she was sharing too.

Then they progressed to “I feel sad when people I’ve known for years forget my birthday,” to which he replied, “I feel angry when people at school say I should go back to Russia.”

With one of the last few blocks they had, she said, “I feel angry when adults hit children.”

He fiddled with his blocks. “That’s just normal, though.”

“Adults have a responsibility to protect children, Anton. They should never hit them.”

“What if by hitting them, the adult’s protecting the kids?” he asked.

“Are those bruises from training with Agent Romanov?” she asked.

“Most of them,” he replied. “She wants to make sure I can still protect myself, so we spar.”

“When did you last spar?” she asked.

“I dunno, a week or so ago, I guess,” he said.

She pulled up her sleeve and showed him faint yellow bruises on her wrists. “A few days ago, I went in for the mandatory training SHIELD has its agents do once a week. I spend the day training with agents more experienced and stronger than me, but my bruises have already started to fade. If yours haven’t, Agent Romanov might be hitting you too hard, and if you both aren’t careful, you could end up hurt more seriously than some bruises.”

He scoffed. “I can handle it. I’m not a baby. Besides, it’s the best way to learn. Everyone always says that pain is the best deterrent.”

“Who says that, Anton?” she asked. The tone of her voice made it clear that this was one question that would be very difficult to wriggle out of, so he simply stayed silent. “Does Agent Romanov ever say that?”

She looked angrier just saying it. He shook his head quickly. “No, I didn’t say that. She’d never say that. Natasha’s good, I swear. She doesn’t hit me because she’s mad, only because I need to learn how to protect myself. That’s important, right?” Maybe if he talked enough she’d forget all about Natasha. He rambled on, barely paying attention to the words that spilled out of his mouth as long as they didn’t mention her. “In the Red Room, everyone learns how to protect themselves, but they never taught me much so I still have a lot to learn. Training isn’t even painful. They taught me how to withstand torture, I think I can handle a couple bruises. I’m not a baby. Even when I was six I got hit worse than this. Papa always said I needed a good thrashing to get anything into my head because otherwise the moment he turned his back I’d get right back to messing around with things I shouldn’t be fiddling with.”

He remembered, one day, finding a large, fancy car in the shop. The car, belonging to a rich man visiting Russia for business, had broken down just outside of their little town, and he’d asked Papa to fix it in return for a large sum of money. It had been the most beautiful thing Anton had ever seen in his entire life.

“Papa doesn’t want you touching that,” His brother had said, stroking that little bird of his. “You’re going to get a thrashing if you go in there. The American has lots of money, and he’s paying Papa to keep his mouth shut.”

 Everybody knew Americans weren’t supposed to be in Russia, after all, and Anton had no doubt that if anyone mentioned the American man, there would be trouble. Papa always said that little boys couldn’t keep their mouths shut even if you cut their tongues out, but the car was so big and shiny that he crept into the shop and peered into its large, powerful engine. He could see what was wrong with it, easy, and before he could think twice his hands were in the engine, twisting and turning and switching and replacing.

His father had yanked him up only half an hour later, and smacked him hard enough that he started crying before shoving him out into the snow. Peering through the window, Anton could see a large man with a beard and a bald head staring at him. He ducked down quickly, and listened to him ask Papa where he went to school and how good he was with machines and look, he’d fixed the car all by himself, and wouldn’t Papa consider letting the American put him in a school where he could put his skills to use.

“No,” Papa said, no matter how much money the man plied him with. “Pay me for the job and leave.”

That week, Papa bought extra booze, and Anton had to beg the old woman next door for some of her borscht because his brother stole Anton’s meager share of their food. He’d tried to stay out of Papa’s way and hide, but the man always found him. Anton’s bruises hadn’t healed for months.

“Anton?” He looked up and found his therapist looking at him in concern.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

Thankfully, she let it drop, and went on to address what he said instead of what he didn’t. _Blah blah blah._ He mostly tuned her out. She realized after a while, and sent him on his way with a smile and a doughnut. She never got mad, like she thought yelling at him or pressing him would make him shut down, like a computer given too much to process all at once. Blue screen of death. Do not pass go, do not collect 200.

Yeah, Clint had been teaching him pop culture. Apparently he’d helped out Captain America a couple times. More often than not, Anton had the feeling Clint was pulling his leg, but it was fun. At least he wasn’t left to sit alone in that big, empty house all the time. And when he did want space, he had plenty of it. Clint and Coulson came by when they could, and after a while he actually settled into a routine.

Then the social worker came.

When she first showed up, Anton didn’t even know what Child Protective Services was, so he thought refusing to let her in until he looked up the organization was very prudent. She didn’t seem too upset, at least.

“Anton Romanov?” she asked.

“Yes.” The curtness of his Russian didn’t deter her.

“Is your guardian home? I’d like to speak with her.”

“No.”

“Where is she?” When he didn’t answer, she asked, “Do you speak English, Anton?”

“Yes.” Maybe if he was short enough with her, she’d go away.

“Can you show me that you can?”

He grinned. “Go to hell, bitch.” A choice phrase he’d learned when Clint had yelled it at a woman who’d called him and Coulson fags. Judging by the sour look on her face, the social worker didn’t appreciate it as much as Anton had.

“Anton, I’ll ask you once more. Where is Ms. Romanov?”

To be honest, he really wasn’t sure where she was. He hadn’t seen her since a week ago, when she’d returned to put him through his paces and give him money for food before vanishing on another op. He shrugged. “Work.”

“When will she be back?”

He gave another noncommittal shrug. “Depends on how long she has to work.”

“Alright. Do you mind if I talk to you while we wait for her?” Her smile was gentle, but he had a feeling he really wasn’t supposed to refuse.

“If you’re okay with Russian,” he said, leading the way to the couch and flopping down on it.

“Russian will be just fine, Anton,” she said. “If you’re comfortable?”

It was strange to be asked after his comfort in his own house, but he nodded and let her begin. The questions, of which there were many, ranged from family to school to feelings and thoughts and anything in between.

“How is school? Do you have a lot of friends?”

“Fine. Enough.”

She smiled at him, still gentle but perhaps a little exasperated, and said, “Anton, I want to get through this just as much as you do. In order to do that, I need you to be open with me. Can you do that?”

Fine. Anything to get rid of her. “School is boring, and the kids more stupid than the ones in Russia.” The Red Room, of course, had always chosen its operatives carefully.

“How do you like America compared to Russia?”

“It’s warmer.”

She laughed. “What else do you like?”

“Coffee. Robots. Math.” The last two he’d first grown to love in Russia, but coffee was new. Coulson drank it every time they went out to breakfast, and sometimes when they went out for lunch or dinner.

“What don’t you like?” the social worker asked.

“Borscht.” He grinned as she laughed again. ‘it’s the recipe Natasha knows how to make best, though, so I can’t escape even now I’m not in Russia.” Granted, it was actually the only recipe she knew how to make. Natasha didn’t quite have his skills with making things.

“Why did you leave Russia?”

“Everything smelled like borscht,” he said seriously. That earned him another laugh, but then she asked for a serious answer. “Life in Russia wasn’t exactly great, so when Natasha got an offer for a job here, she left and took me with her.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

Great, it was like therapy all over again. Time for the most generic answers possible. “No one wants to leave their home for a totally different country. But it’s pretty cool here.” He couldn’t help but grin, just thinking of the rows and rows of computers at school and the team made just to build robots and the classes that taught you to build things. “There’s so much stuff to do and learn. I mean, I can go to college!” He’d always wanted to go, but Papa had said he was too stupid and too poor, and at the Red Room no one went to school.

“That wasn’t a possibility in Russia?”

His exuberance dimmed when he remembered his audience, but then he looked at her and saw such sadness and anger on his behalf from this woman who didn’t even know him that he decided to give her a bit of honesty and said, “Lady, in Russia I didn’t even go to school.”

The questions continued, more subdued, but he could see her genuine interest at each question and its accompanying answer. She didn’t dwell on them, not even when something upset her, and she proved to be astute at making deductions from what he didn’t say.

“How are you disciplined?”

“I’m not.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Now don’t tell me you’ve never stayed out past curfew or gotten a bit too rambunctious inside.”

“Course not,” he said. “I’m just too good to be caught.”

“Or she wasn’t around to catch you.”

It was around seven at night, he realized as his stomach growled. The social worker was looking at him seriously. “Anton, is Ms. Romanov coming home tonight?” His breath caught in his throat, but he managed to shake his head. “When was she last home?”

He gasped in a breath—bubble breaths, he reminded himself—and stumbled over his words. “I—five days. Five days. I saw her on Monday.”

“How long had she been home for?”

“I don’t know. Late Sunday? I didn’t see her come in.” He waved his hands around as he explained, trying to shake off the feeling that his skin was too small for his body.

“How long had she been gone before that?”

“I don’t know. Less than a week, I guess.” It had been more like two weeks, but he wasn’t about to make it sound that bad.

“What did you do when you saw her?”

His voice refused to speak at anything louder than a whisper. “Said hi. Took the money for food. Hung out after school. Went to bed. Didn’t see her again.” He had to choke out the words. He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone anything—Natasha always said that if he told people too much, they would take him away and send him back to Russia, where it was cold and everyone was always angry at you—but all of the training to withstand torture was useless under her relentless, gentle gaze.

“Anton, calm down,” she said, and he realized that his breaths were coming too fast and sharp to be useful. He slowed them to match hers, and leaned into the hand rubbing gentle circles into his back. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him like that. Maybe Mama, a long time ago. He couldn’t even remember her, and neither could his older brother, but he always thought that she must have been nice.

“Who looks after you when Ms. Romanov is gone?” Nobody, he didn’t say. “I want you to call them and tell them to come over.”

He fumbled for his phone and paused over his contacts. Coulson said he could call, but he was probably running Natasha’s op; he’d said that he wouldn’t be able to make it for dinner. Clint had said that he’d be late, but he’d probably be able to make it. Makign his decision, Anton pressed a button and listened to the phone ring until it was finally picked up.

“Barton here.” He sounded tired and grumpy.

“Clint?” Anton said.

Immediately, the man cheered up. “Oh, hey, shrimp. I was just thinking I should tell you I might be late coming over. It’s been wild over here. What’s up?”

“There’s a social worker at my house,” he said.

A pause as Clint digested the information, then a loud thump. “Shit! Shit, okay. Listen, just sit tight. I will be right over. Christ. Why’s a social worker visiting so late anyways?”

“She’s been here for three hours,” Anton said. He winced as there was a loud crash and louder curses, and wrapped an arm around his knees. From this position he was able to studiously examine his toes and ignore the social worker, who had started rubbing circles on his back again. When had breathing gotten so hard? “’M sorry.”

“Shit. Listen, Anton, it’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong, you hear? I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just give me ten minutes.”

“It’s impossible to get from work to here in ten minutes. Unless you have a flying car, which I’m pretty sure I haven’t invented yet.” The joke felt heavy in his mouth.

“I’m on the helicarrier. Coulson has ways of getting there quickly, trust me.”

“I thought he was busy,” Anton said.

“He’s monitoring Natasha’s comms, but it’s nothing Sitwell can’t do. Ten minutes, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Anton said, but Clint had already hung up. He stared at his phone blankly, occasionally flipping it over or turning it on to check the time. Second longest ten minutes of his life. First place went, of course, to the time he’d been locked in a flooding cell while Yakov tried to rescue him. At least now he wasn’t in danger of drowning if Clint and Coulson took a little bit longer to get here, although he might have been at risk of suffocating.

Clint was in his uniform when he slammed the door open. Coulson was behind him, looking much calmer but rather windblown. His tie was even slightly crooked. “Phil Coulson,” he said, stepping forward and shaking the social worker’s hand. He drew her aside and began to talk to her quietly while Clint took her seat next to Anton.

“Phil? I thought his name was Agent Coulson,” Anton muttered. It seemed like the least harmless thing to bring up.

Clint seemed to be barely holding back a laugh. “Wait, seriously? You thought his full name was Agent Coulson?”

“Well, that’s what everyone calls him,” Anton said.

“It’s a title. Like Mr. or Mrs. I’m Agent Barton, for example. Wait, is that why you keep calling him Agent Coulson? Because you know you can just call him Phil.”

Well, now he just felt stupid. And he just knew that Clint was going to tell Coulson the moment everything died down, which looked to be soon. The social worker was shaking hands with Coulson when he glanced over, and she left quickly, not looking too happy about it.

“I told her SHIELD would deal with it and contact her superiors. Tell me, Anton, has Natasha ever had anyone check up on you while she was gone?”

“No,” he said.

Coulson’s brown furrowed. “I’m going to have a long chat with her when she returns from her op. For now, you’re coming with us. Come on, let’s get your things.” When they got to his bedroom, Coulson produced a large suitcase from the closet and handed it off to Anton. While they packed everything, even the things the room had already come with, into cardboard boxes Coulson had pulled out of the closet as well, he haphazardly threw his clothes into the suitcase. Clint took the boxes out and led the way outside, while Coulson took the suitcase.

Anton hung back. “Are you sending me back to Russia? I won’t—I don’t want to go back. Don’t send me back to Russia. I won’t let you!” When Coulson tried to take him by the wrist, Anton lashed out and smacked him away. “Don’t send me back to Russia! I don’t want to! The Red Room—and, and Papa—!” Coulson reached out again and Anton reflexively shrank back and collapsed onto the floor, knees pulled to his chest and face hidden between them. In Russia, hitting Papa would have gotten him a beating and a night spent outside.

He didn’t want to go back to Russia. Papa was probably still angry with him. He’d be even angrier if he could see Anton now, sniveling and pretending he wasn’t crying as he huddled in front of a balding man in a suit. “Don’t send me away.”

“Shh, Anton, it’s alright,” Coulson said. His hands, gentle, not hurting, rubbed over Anton’s arms. “Deep breaths. There we go. Come here.”

With a slight groan, Coulson managed to lift Anton up and tucked him up against his body in a protective hug. The man was stronger than he looked. Anton gave up trying to protect himself from whatever blows might be coming and relaxed into Coulson, shaking apart as he clutched the man’s suit tight and wiped his tears on the man’s jacket. It was ruined, but Coulson didn’t seem to care. He kept rocking back and forth, rubbing soothing circles on Anton’s back.

“No one is sending you back to Russia,” he said. “As long as I have a say, you will never have to go back to Russia again. Clint and I are taking you to stay with us, that’s all. You shouldn’t be living alone, and I’m sorry that you have. I thought Natasha was making sure someone was staying with you, or at least checking in on you.”

“In Russia I had to take care of myself,” he said into Coulson’s suit.

“Does this look like Russia to you?” Anton shook his head in response. “Exactly. Are you ready?”

When he nodded, Coulson let him go and, keeping an arm around his shoulder, led him out the door and to a loud, bright red convertible. Clint had already piled the boxes into the car, and slammed the trunk closed as it approached.

“You should drive him in Lola. I’ll catch a taxi.”

Coulson gave him an amused look that Anton only barely caught out of the corner of our eyes. “Clint, with Lola the police aren’t exactly going to pull us over for having three people in a two-seater.”

“True enough. Make sure you hold on tight though, short stuff. Wouldn’t want you flying away.”

They somehow managed to all cram into the car, with Coulson driving and Anton sandwiched between him and Clint. Then, will a press of a buttons, the car took off and they were flying, really flying. Leaning out the window, Anton could see the safehouse getting smaller and smaller, until they were able to fly over all the houses in their path, taking the most direct route possible to Clint and Coulson’s house.

“Hope you like dogs,” Clint said as he hopped out of the car after they touched down. Anton didn’t have a chance to ask why before he opened the door and a large dog ran out, wagging his tail and barking happily as he pranced between Anton, Clint, and Coulson.

“Down, Lucky. Good boy.” Clint knelt and began tussling with the dog on the living room floor. Coulson smiled and led Anton around the two.

“You can have the guest room. We don’t use it for anything anyways,” Coulson said, leading him down the hallway. “It has its own bathroom, so that’s something.”

He dropped Anton’s bags by the door. “I’ll leave you to get settled.”

“Thanks . . . Phil,” Anton said. Phil reached out and ruffled his hair. Anton was actually beginning to get used to them doing that. It was a nice feeling. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starks were evil; everyone knew that. Except, apparently, Phil Coulson.

Living with Clint and Phil was actually pretty nice. When one of them was out on an op, the other was usually there, and Clint’s dog was always there keeping Anton company, begging for treats at the dinner table and jumping onto his bed in the middle of the night, always right when Anton was in the middle of a nightmare. When neither of them was home they let him come in to SHIELD and hang out with the agents there. It wasn’t that bad when he wasn’t confined to a room, he had to admit. Steve was there a lot of the time, training or practicing his drawing, and if he wasn’t too busy he’d stop and talk to Anton. He stayed home when they were only gone for a day or so, so he wasn’t constantly running back and forth between SHIELD and home.

By his next visit to his therapist, his bruises had all faded away. They talked for a bit about the change in the living situation. He had to admit, it was nice talking to someone who had to listen no matter what. Once he got into it, it was surprisingly easy to talk about himself for an hour and a half every two weeks. Half the time they played games, though, which could vary between childish and fun.

His therapist suggested talking in English, but he didn’t really want to bring that home yet. Phil and Clint spoke Russian, after all. He did speak English with the neighborhood kids, and he began to do it in his English classes at school. People shoved him in the hallways still, but at least he had friends.

Peter Parker had come up to him one day and said, “Hey, can I interview you for the yearbook? We don’t have a lot of students that moved from foreign countries.”  

“I don’t want to be in the yearbook,” Anton had said, but Peter kept following him around, slowing gleaning information about his life. It turned out they had science class together. That made science more fun, at least. Peter didn’t live that close to him, but Clint and Phil’s neighborhood had a surprisingly large amount of kids who were quick to welcome Anton into their group with only a little bit of poking fun for his accent. It was easier making friends when he actually talked to people, he had to admit. Not to mention that it made his teachers stop treating him like an idiot.

He hadn’t told Natasha about the first parent-teacher meeting, knowing she was unlikely to go anyways, but Phil knew about it already and showed up along with Clint. “Oh, Phil,” his teacher said happily. “I had noticed the paperwork change. Congratulations. You’ve adopted a very brilliant boy.”

Phil gave his usual reserved smile. “I’m aware.”

“His grades have improved incredibly since he’s stopped doing all his work in Russian,” she said. “If his language skills continue to improve, I’d actually suggest moving him up a grade. Algebra seems to be a bit boring for him.”

“We’ll see,” Phil said.

As they left, Clint clapped Anton on the back. “Hey, good job with the English, kid. Skipping up a grade, huh? You must take after Coulson.”

“Going by your IQ, you could skip more than a grade,” Coulson remarked. “You could definitely get into high school earlier than normal. There are schools more equipped to handle your level of intelligence, but let’s keep you close to home for now, hmm? Now, what do you want for dinner?”  

“I’ll make it,” he decided.

Coulson almost looked relieved. “Oh, good. I have a bit of work to get done quickly at the office. Clint, take him home?”

They split at the parking lot, Coulson driving off in his red convertible and Clint hopping into the more subdued SHIELD vehicle. Anton got to work in the kitchen the moment they arrived home, while Clint watched from the kitchen table.

“What are you making? I see you making it a lot.”

Anton poked at the soup, idly wondering if it was time to add the meat yet. “It’s called shchi. When there wasn’t any money I always made this for dinner because it was cheap, easy, and hot.”

“Huh. You know, I always thought you grew up with the Red Room. Didn’t Natasha?”

“No, I lived in a town in Siberia until I was six,” Anton said. “And actually, Natasha was a bit older than me when she started working for the Red Room.”

“You made your own dinner when you were six? Color me impressed. The most I could do was pour soup out of a can,” Clint said.

Anton glanced at him, considering, and then said, “I did what I had to. Papa and my brother were busy, so I made dinner. Sometimes I got to help them out in the shop, and that was fun. It’s where I learned to build things. Papa was a very talented inventor. Of course, that’s also what got the Red Room interested in me. I mean, when you’ve got a six-year-old making toys powered by tiny arc reactors, someone’s going to take notice.”

Clint sat up suddenly. “What did you say?”

He’d probably said too much. Quickly, Anton turned his attention to the soup. “I said that the Red Room was interested in me because of the work I did for my papa. Does this look good to you?”

“You’re the expert, kid. Now tell me again: why did the Red Room notice you?”

Anton took the shchi off the stove and began distributing it into three bowls. One for him, one for Clint, one for Phil. Even when the food was placed in front of him, though, Clint didn’t look away from Anton. He poked at his food and didn’t meet Clint’s eyes. “Because I could make miniature arc reactors.”

“That’s Stark technology,” Clint said. “The arc reactor. I’ve never heard of a miniature one.”

Anton shook his head. “No, it’s Papa’s technology. The Starks are thieves and liars and murderers—” His chest was tight and it was hard to breathe, like the time when his brother had sat on his chest and pinned him to the snow until Anton had started to cry. Then he just ran and told Papa that Anton was being a baby and Anton got in trouble. Papa didn’t like babies, just like he didn’t like liars and thieves and murderers and Starks.

_You listen and you listen well, boy—if you can manage that. You’re weak. You know what happens to weak things? They break. And we all know what we do to broken things here—they get destroyed. So shape up, boy, or you’ll find yourself outside with the rest of the trash._

“Anton. Breathe _._ You’re safe, at home, with a bowl of whatever the hell this is. It’s Clint, okay? You’re safe. Deep breaths now. Bubble breaths, or whatever your therapist calls them.”

Anton opened his eyes. Clint was kneeling in front of him anxiously, and when Anton opened his eyes, his smile was so relieved and happy that Anton couldn’t help but return it. “That’s my kid. Fucking conquer those anxiety attacks. Come on, fist bump.” Obligingly, Anton bumped his fist against the man’s. “Now eat your soup. It’s no use waiting for Phil, he’ll be late coming home anyways.”

Sure enough, Phil didn’t show up all through dinner, or afterwards, when Clint and Anton sat in front of the TV and watched Star Wars while Lucky flopped onto their laps and generally got in the way. Anton didn’t see hide or hair of Phil until early the next morning, when he drifted awake as the door to his bedroom opened.

“See? I told you he was fine now,” Clint whispered.

“I know.” Anton closed his eyes as Phil gently brushed Anton’s bangs out of his face. “I just wanted to check on him.”

“Well, hey, at least he’s talking. It’s progress,” Clint said. “I can deal with a couple anxiety attacks.”

“I should talk to Stark,” Phil said. “Find out what he knows. I get the feeling he hasn’t been sharing everything with us.”

“Well, he’s a slippery guy. Old, but slippery. Like that one eel in that aquarium that had lived for an eternity because it was too smart to get killed,” Clint said.

“Sounds like Stark. Maybe I can talk to Maria instead,” Phil sighed.

“Easier to deal with, harder to get to,” Clint said. “It’s worth a shot. Don’t run off too quickly, though. I promised the kid that if he did all his homework in English we’d watch the next Star Wars movie together.”

“I’ll make sure to be here, then.” Phil smoothed over Anton’s hair again before getting up, murmuring as he did, “Goodnight, Antoshka.”

Clint snickered; when Anton opened his eyes he saw the man slip an arm around Phil’s waist. “What was that, old man?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you actually look up nicknames for Anton?”

“I had some spare time.”

“Imagine if SHIELD could see you now. The great Agent Coulson, totally gone over a tweenager.” The door closed behind them with a soft click, so he could only hear only vague snatches of the conversation as the two wandered off to their own bedroom.

He could never tell when which of them was going to be home at any given time, but they next day, true to Clint’s word, they all sat down on the couch, Lucky at their feet, and marathoned Star Wars until Anton dropped off to sleep while Luke was being led to the Emperor by Darth Vader. He woke up briefly to find himself being lifted from the couch, and had enough presence of mind to wrap his arms around Clint’s neck but not enough to protest the treatment. When he next opened his eyes, Clint was gone, and the only sign of Phil in the house was his voice drifting down the hallway. Anton followed his voice to the office, where Phil was chatting at someone, a friend by the sound of it.

“Yes, that sounds lovely—oh, excuse me for a moment. Good morning. Breakfast is on the table,” he said. “I’ll be down in a few, I just have to take care of this call.”

Anton shut the door behind him, but kept his ear pressed up against it, hushing Lucky when the dog wandered up and looked liable to start barking. “Yes, my son, Anton,” Phil said. “Recently. Yes, I think he’s getting used to it here, thank you for asking. Oh? Russia. Siberia. Oh, he and Clint get along just fine. Really? I’ll ask him. He’s very interested in engineering and such. I’ll bring him by when we talk. Yes, thank you, Maria. Tomorrow, noon. I’ll see you then.”

Anton ran down the stairs as quietly and quickly as possible, and was safely seated and serving himself breakfast by the time Phil joined him. Judging by his amused look, the man knew what he’d been up to, but he didn’t bring it up.  

“Clint won’t be home for a few days. He tried to say goodbye but you were fast asleep. Well, if you’re sleeping at noon, I guess you really are getting to be a teenager. You won’t be able to sleep as late tomorrow, unfortunately. If you like, I have a business meeting with Maria Stark, and she’s offered to let you take a look at the labs while we talk,” Phil said.

Oh. Maria _Stark_. Well, Papa never said anything about her in particular, and she was only a Stark by marriage, so maybe it was okay. “Okay,” Anton said.

They drove Lola to Stark Tower, but unfortunately didn’t fly. Anton liked flying. It was faster and more fun than sitting in New York traffic for ages and ages. He entertained himself by finding out just how long he could put loud rock music on the radio before Phil switched it back to oldies. The answer: long enough that the station was switched ten times in between leaving home and arriving at Stark Tower.

“Out, out, you imp,” Phil said, swatting Anton’s hands away from the controls and herding him towards the building. “Now, don’t wander off.”

Stark Tower’s lobby was massive and incredibly shiny, as if just stepping on the tiles would scuff them. Phil walked across them without a care, heading straight to the desk. “Hello, Mrs. Arbogast,” he said. “Agent Phil Coulson from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division here for an appointment with Mrs. Stark.”

“I know who you are, Agent,” she replied, distinctly unimpressed with him. “Mrs. Stark, Agent Coulson to see you.”

They only had to wait a few moments before a red-haired woman was strolling towards them. “Phil,” she said, shaking his hand. “It’s good to see you again. Mrs. Stark is in the labs; I’ll take you to see her. And who’s this?”

“Anton Romanov,” Anton said, shaking her hand.

“I’m Pepper Potts. It’s very nice to meet you.” Looking at her, he could tell that she actually meant it. “Right this way, Anton, Phil.”

Even the elevators at Stark were nice, all shiny and chrome with a couch on one wall. Fast, too. Pepper only had time to say, “I thought you said you and Clint weren’t sure about adopting,” before the doors slid open and they were walking into a large space filled with a variety of computers and machines. A robot in the corner turned its head and chirped as Anton leaned in close to it.

“Well, life happens, sometimes,” Phil said, as they turned a corner and came upon a woman who was beautiful despite her age. She was old enough to be Phil’s mother, albeit a young one, but her hair was still dark and thick.

“Phil, it’s nice to see you. And I see you brought Anton.” When she turned to look at him, though, she jerked back in surprise. At their raised eyebrows, she laughed at herself. “Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just he reminded me of my son. Tony would be much older than Anton, of course. That’s part of getting old, I suppose. You start seeing ghosts everywhere. It’s nice to meet you.”

Well, she didn’t seem that bad. Maybe you had to be born a Stark to be bad. Or maybe she’d really murdered her son and that was why she was shocked . . . but no, that was stupid. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

“Go ahead and take a look around the shop. I can give you the tour once Phil and I are finished with our business. Howard isn’t in right now—shareholder meeting, you know how it is—but feel free to take a look.”

Phil drew her aside and they began talking in low whispers, but Anton paid them no attention. There were far, far more interesting things to be found here. The robot he’d seen walking in was cool, but where he was now seemed to be a workstation filled with incomplete projects. He read over the math idly, occasionally making notes on a spare sheet of paper he’d found, correcting all the little errors and making adjustments to improve it. He barely paid any attention when the voices in the corner rose, only noting when a new male voice said, “Well, let’s ask him,” and a large, heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Anton whirled around and jerked back as he recognized the man.

“It’s you!” he exclaimed in Russian. “From Papa’s workshop.”

The man narrowed his eyes at him, then stared. “Anton Vanko’s boy? What the devil—?”

Anton turned tail and ran. All three of the adults yelled after him, but he kept running as if the floor would crumble beneath his feet if he stopped. He took the elevator, making sure it closed before anyone could follow him in, and got off at the first floor it stopped at, ignoring the confused employees that stared after him. He turned corners until he couldn’t hear any footsteps chasing after him, then slipped into the office at the end of the hall and crawled under the desk sitting in the middle of the room. He gathered his knees to his chest and tried desperately to calm his beating heart.

They weren’t going to give him back to Papa. Phil had promised.

Thinking about it didn’t do him any good, so he stared down at the papers still clenched in his hand. He smoothed them out on the smooth, wood floor. Now that was different. All the other offices had carpet or tile. A quick glance outside showed wood cabinets and a bottle of expensive alcohol, but then the door opened and he slipped back beneath the desk.

“I told you, Morgan,” a man said. His shoes clicked loudly on the floor. “I am not bailing you out of your debts. Ask Edward. Don’t ‘uncle’ me! Stop gambling away all your money, and then you’ll stop landing yourself in trouble.” He sighed loudly and hung up the phone.

“I will discover the secret to immortality before I let that boy take over my company,” he muttered to himself as he strolled to the bottle. From his vantage point, Anton could see expensive slacks and expensive shoes, both very well-made. He slid out slightly, trying to catch a glimpse of the man’s face.

He got what he wanted when the man turned around and met Anton’s surprised face with an equally shocked expression. “Tony?” he exclaimed. He looked down at the bottle in his hand and shook his head. “I must be drunker than I thought if I’m seeing things this badly.”

“You’re Mr. Stark,” Anton said. He recognized him from the papers Papa had pasted all over the workshop.

“Yes, yes. What of it, ghost?”

“My papa said you’re a murderer,” he found himself saying.

The man only laughed. “So does everyone else’s father, pal. I’m the Merchant of Death these days. Now, how did you get in here?”

“I ran,” he said. “From the lab. There was a meeting with Mrs. Stark. You can have these back, by the way.”

At first Mr. Stark only gave the papers Anton handed him a cursory glance, but then he turned down at them so quickly Anton was sure he’d get whiplash. “This is the code for the Jericho missiles. I abandoned this months ago.”

Anton shrugged. “My papa was a great inventor.”

“How old are you?” Mr. Stark asked as he poured over the corrections Anton had written.

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen,” Mr. Stark repeated. “You are pretty damn smart for thirteen, pal. Who taught you this?”

“My papa,” he said.

“Yes, but who?” Stark insisted.

The intercom buzzed. Stark gave it a dirty look, but nonetheless pressed the button to accept the call. “Yes, Mrs. Arbogast,” he said.

“Mr. Stark, your wife wants to know if you’ve seen a boy wandering the building. Her guest seems to have been misplaced.”

“I have him in my office now. Send them up,” Stark said.

Coulson walked into the office, actually looking rather tense for once rather than calm as he usually was. “There you are,” he said tensely, pulling Anton away from Stark and tucking him close to his side. Anton realized why a few moments later, as Mrs. Stark and the American man from the workshop barged in, talking over each other loudly.

“I said it once and I said it again, that is Anton Vanko’s boy. I couldn’t forget that snot-nosed face if I tried!”

“You’re imagining things, Stane. He’s thirteen years old!”

Mr. Stark looked up from the papers. “What’s this about Vanko? The man’s dead, can’t we all give it a rest?”

“His son, Howard,” Mrs. Stark snapped.

“Who, Ivan? What about him? He lives in Siberia, for heaven’s sake,” he grumbled. “Everyone quiet. Now what is all this about?”

“That boy looks exactly like Anton Vanko’s younger boy,” Stane said, pointing accusingly at Anton.

“Anton Vanko only had one son, and he’s in his forties,” Stark said. “Trust me, that’s not him.”

“He had two, Howard,” Stane growled. “A little one and an older one. The older one was Ivan. The little one was—I don’t know, Anton Junior or something. I saw him when I was in Siberia in ’76. Some little snot-nosed thing that fixed my car all by himself. I wanted to bring him to America, let him get a proper education so he could be of more use than he was in some dirty old workshop in Siberia, but Vanko was having none of it.”

“Anton Vanko had one son,” Howard said. “Trust me, I’ve kept an eye on that family. One set of hospital records, one birth certificate. There was only one son.”

“Then who,” Stane growled, “was the second boy that I saw fixing my car?”

Howard shrugged. “For all you know, it could have been some neighborhood boy that worked for Vanko. I know for a fact, though, that he only had one son.”

“Then tell me, Howard, if he only had one son, how is it that this boy supposedly knows how to miniaturize arc reactors?”

Everyone in the room looked at Anton. “It’s what Coulson wanted to talk to me about,” Mrs. Stark said. “He wanted to know if Vanko would have known how to do that.”

Stark sighed. “Probably. I know he wasn’t doing much in Siberia, that was for sure. He had plenty of time to figure it out.”

The other three continued to argue, growing louder and louder all the time. “Anton,” Coulson whispered, drawing him aside. “Is Anton Vanko your father?” Anton nodded once, and he sighed heavily. “Thank you for telling me.”

Coulson cleared his throat loudly, drawing the attention of the other three adults in the room. “I thought I should clear this up. Anton’s father did work in Vanko’s workshop—he was the boy that Stane saw. When he died, his sister took in Anton and brought him here, and then Clint and I adopted him. All I wanted to know was if it was really possible for the Vanko family to know how to miniaturize arc reactors.” Anton had to give it to the man; he sure could come up with a lie on short notice.

“Yes, yes, he probably did. What of it?” Stark said.

“If he did, we have problems. Ivan Vanko, who SHIELD has identified as high-risk, has left Siberia, and we no longer know where he is.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clint's dog Lucky is actually taken from the Hawkeye comics, so I actually didn't just stick a dog in there for some random reason. (Okay I totally did, but whatever.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometime America is fun. Sometimes it sucks. But hey, at least there's the Stark Expo to look forward to.

Starks really weren’t so bad. Mr. Stark drank a lot and had a tendency to call Anton ‘Tony’ after a few glasses, but he wasn’t murdering babies in cold blood or anything. He let Anton fiddle with the things lying around his workshop, and that made him good in Anton’s books, especially when he got paid ten dollars an hour for being an intern. None of the other interns got to do anything so fun. Most of them seemed to end up carrying papers around for everyone else. Plus, he could speak and read Russian, and didn’t mind if Anton wrote all his notes that way.

Mrs. Stark was nice, too. She didn’t actually work for Stark Industries—she had a lot of charities—but at the end of the day she’d come in to pull Howard away from his work, and she’d walk Anton down to the lobby, where Clint or Phil would pick him up. She slipped up sometimes and called him Tony, too, but he never called her out on it.

He did ask Phil who Tony was, though. The man sighed heavily when he asked. “Tony Stark is one of SHIELD’s biggest regrets. He went missing decades around, when he was only three years old, and SHIELD was never able to find him. Mr. Stark likes to keep an eye out for him but . . . after almost forty years, it’s highly unlikely that he’s still alive. Right now, the person that stands to inherit Stark Industries is Obadiah Stane and his son Ezekiel, something that SHIELD would like to prevent, as Mr. Stane has never struck us as an individual interested in the same goals as we are. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re avoiding writing that essay.”

Anton grimaced, but pressed pen back down to paper. “The Starks keep accidentally calling me Tony.”

“You look similar to their son. They never quite got over losing him—it’s my personal belief that it’s part of why they never had any other children. That, and they weren’t particularly good parents in the first place. I remember when he first went missing. I was only eight years old, but it was hard not to notice. There was a massive investigation into the Starks and all their friends and business rivals. No sign of him, though. Not even a body to bury. No one’s even heard a whisper of his existence since he vanished.”

“You need better search parties,” Anton said. “Didn’t it take you seventy years to find Captain America?”

Phil grimaced. “Yes, well . . . he seems to be adjusting. Slowly, but adjusting. He and Natasha get along very well, actually.”

“I’m glad. Natasha needs friends,” he said. “Or else maybe she’ll get bored and turn to a life of crime.”

Phil chuckled wryly. “Well, no worries there. I assure you, we’ve been keeping her very busy. She went off to Budapest with Clint just recently. He congratulates you on your internship, by the way.”

“Tell him thanks and come home safe,” Anton said.

Phil nodded and tapped on his phone. “When is your birthday, Anton?”

“I dunno. Never celebrated it,” Anton said.

“I ask because the day you arrived in America is coming up in a few months, and I thought that might be a nice date if, as I suspected, you didn’t know your original birthday.”

“Oh. Yeah, that sounds fun.”

On the stove, the kettle whistled loudly, and Phil began going through the process of making his coffee, still glancing at his phone every now and then. Anton had a feeling it was something to do with his brother. “Phil, why’s everyone so worried about Ivan?” The guy was a bully, but he wasn’t that bad.

“The Vanko family has plenty of reasons to dislike the United States, and the Stark family in particular. They also have the means to act on their hatred. As the Stark family is one that SHIELD is very interested in, we also have to take interest in Ivan.” He looked away from his phone to meet Anton’s eyes. “I’m sorry if that upsets you. I know he was your brother, but it’s been a long time since then.”

He shrugged and picked up his pen again. He didn’t feel like writing the essay, but he could scribble something out. “It’s okay. He didn’t really like me anyways.”

Phil hummed idly. “Well, it’s unlikely that anything will come of it anyways.”

Of course, that just jinxed them, and the next thing they knew, Ivan was blowing up the Stark racecar in Monaco, armed with whips and a miniaturized arc reactor. Anton watched on the television as Ivan wreaked havoc, taking in the way the arc reactor looked and worked, and while the Starks and Stane yelled at each other in the background, settled down in the corner and began to work.

As a child, he’d used scraps to design and create small arc reactors. They’d only been powerful enough to power his toy train, but the Red Room had put him to use designing versions to power their generators and weapons. He’d never made on quite as small as the one Ivan had, but he was sure he could manage it.

He wasn’t about to let his brother ruin everything, not now that he was in America, where it was warm and the people were nice and hardly ever mad at you. When Ivan was around, he always made messes that people blamed Anton for. It wouldn’t be long before someone point out that he probably figured out how to make the arc reactor from watching Anton make them as a child.

At some point, Phil, Steve, and Nick Fury himself walked in and joined the yelling. Something about the Stark Expo and whether it should or shouldn’t go on. He decided to stay out of their way in case they decided to start yelling at him, too. Better safe than sorry. He was just fine picking bits of palladium out of broken Stark weapons and melting it down to make his arc reactor. His hands were well practiced from doing this so much as a child, but it still took him a few hours. When he finished, though, the adults were still yelling at each other. Shrugging to himself, Anton began to piece together a weapon attached to the reactor. Something more ranged than the whips—he wouldn’t want to get caught up in those, that was for sure.

He was pretty sure the sun had set by the time he finished piecing it all together. The adults had stopped screaming and had moved on to quietly arguing with each other. They still weren’t paying him any attention. Grinning wickedly, Anton fastened the arc reactor to his chest and his weapon to his palm. When he triggered it, it whined loudly and began to power up. 

The blast was concussive enough to send him flying back into Howard’s robot, thankfully missing his own half-assembled version. The robot screeched in terror and began to whirl around desperately. On the other side of the room, Howard’s drafting table had exploded into slivers of wood and ripped pieces of paper fluttered down from where they had flown up during the explosion.

Anton grinned and propped himself up in the pile of wreckage. “Motherfucking awesome!” he exclaimed.

Naturally, the moment he said that the mechanism on his hand sparked and died. A quick glance at his chest showed that the arc reactor had started to melt, and was probably in danger of setting his shirt on fire, judging by the heat. He ripped it off and dumped it to the side, leaving it for the robot to poke at forlornly.

“Anton Romanov, what on earth did you think you were doing?” Phil exclaimed.

 “Are you all right?” Steve asked. Fury looked like he was about to have an aneurism.  

He’d forgotten about the adults. “Um, sorry?” he said, turning to face them. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. Sorry I wrecked your lab, Mr. Stark.”

“Sorry? Sorry?” Mr. Stark stomped forward. For a moment, Anton was worried the man was going to give him a beating, but the man just crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at him. “Next time, don’t aim at anything. At least this time you didn’t destroy anything actually valuable with that explosion of yours.”

“Howard, he destroyed your plans.”

“Plans schmans.” He waved it off. “This is the digital age, agent! Everything that isn’t up here is in the computer. He aimed in the right place, at least. If he’d aimed at the alcohol cabinet, well, then we’d have to have words . . .”

He scooped up the discarded arc reactor and began examining it curiously. Maria wandered around the room, sweeping up bits of paper and wood. Stane rubbed his temples and escaped the premises. All Phil did was fix Anton with a stern glare.

“We’re going home,” he said. Anton scrambled to follow as he swept out into the elevator and fidgeted through the tense silence. Phil didn’t say a word until they were out the lobby and in the car.

“That was unacceptable,” he said as they pulled away from Stark Towards. “Absolutely unacceptable, Anton.”

“Mr. Stark didn’t care,” he muttered.

“I don’t care if he didn’t care. This time you might have only damaged some plans, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is not okay to thoughtlessly destroy other people’s property. This isn’t your workshop, Anton. This is Mr. Stark’s workplace that he kindly allows you to work at because he thinks you have a lot of potential. It is not okay to repay that kindness by blowing up a good portion of his workshop. You could have hurt yourself, did you ever think of that? You were knocked back a good ten feet. You landed by Mr. Stark’s helper bot, but it could have gone a lot worse. There are explosives in that workshop, Anton.”

“I know,” he muttered.

Phil raised an eyebrow. “You do, huh? Then how about next time you think about it and exercise your judgment before doing something so stupid.”

Anton sat in silence for the rest of the car ride. It was only when they reached the house that Phil said, “You’re grounded for the next week. School, then home. No going out with friends and no Stark Industries.”

“What? But you can’t—I’m an intern!” Anton glared at him angrily. “I have to be there.”

“I’ll explain to the Starks that you won’t be there next week,” Phil said calmly.

“But Stark Expo opens this week!” he whined.

“Then I guess you’ll be missing it. And no complaining, or I won’t let you go this weekend, either.”

Anton made sure to slam the car door especially loudly, and slammed the front door right in Phil’s face. Clint looked up as he stormed through the living room, but Anton only heard him say, “Whoa, short stuff, what’s up?” before he slammed his bedroom door and threw himself on his bed. Lucky nosed at him in concern, but Anton shoved him off.

Captain America’s smile seemed especially judgmental today.

The door opened. “Hey, I brought you some dinner, short stuff,” Clint said. The bed dipped under his weight. “It’s right here if you get hungry.”

He left, closing the door behind him. Apparently they didn’t even want to eat dinner with him now. Anton turned over and glared at the bread and soup left on his table, but pulled it closer to himself nevertheless. He ate in silence, staring ahead and only looking down at the soft ‘plink’ of a tear falling off his face and landing in the soup on his lap.

God, he was pathetic. He would rather have them hit him. At least then he’d have a reason to cry. He glared at the bowl, still mostly full, and with a frustrated yell threw it to the floor. The bowl shattered, the soup spilled, and the quiet murmurs of conversation from downstairs stopped completely. Anton glowered at the sound of approaching footsteps and rolled away from the door.

“Watch your step,” Coulson said. The bed dipped again, and a hand settled on Anton’s shoulder. He could feel himself shaking under Coulson’s steady hand.

This was usually the part where Papa would hit him, but Clint just sat down too and said, “Come ‘ere, kiddo,” and maneuvered Anton into his lap. A choked sob escaped him before he could hold it back, but Clint just held him tight and rubbed a hand over his back.

“Why don’t you just hit me?” He said into Clint’s shirt. At least then he would have an actual reason to cry instead of just being so pathetic.

“Why do you think we should hit you, Anton?” Coulson asked.

He shrugged. “I was bad. I deserve it. I need to learn my lesson.” Any variety of reasons that Papa had screamed at him as his fists connected with Anton’s body.

“Anton, no matter what you do, you will never be bad enough that you deserve to be hit, and there are for more effective ways to teach you not do to something than to hurt you,” Clint said. “It’s hard to remember sometimes, but Phil and I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Papa always,” Anton began, but didn’t even try to finish.

“Anton Vanko mistreated and abused a child that should have been treated as nothing other than precious,” Coulson said. “Believe me when I say that’s not the way a father should act.”

They weren’t going to hit him when he was bad. Clint was whispering in his ear, “You’re not bad at all, you’re most wonderful kid I’ve ever known, fuck, Anton, you’re amazing.” Phil was still rubbing circles on his back. Gradually, Anton allowed his eyes to slip closed.

When he woke up, the shattered bowl was gone and the spilled soup cleaned up.

He still wasn’t allowed to go anywhere but school, but at least he could go to Stark Expo on the weekend, even if he couldn’t go to the opening. He wasn’t sure exactly who was presenting. Something about a hammer, maybe? Mr. Stark tended to mutter to himself while he worked, but Anton didn’t catch everything. For all he knew hammers might have nothing at all to do with Stark Expo.

On Saturday night, Anton was seated between Mrs. Stark and Phil, with Clint on Phil’s other side and Mr. Stark next to his wife, dressed in a suit that he personally thought looked very nice. Phil said the tie was “too loud” but what did he know. He was going bald.

As a presenter stepped up on the stage, Mr. Stark groaned loudly. “I knew it. I knew it! Someone let Justin Hammer into my expo. Maria—”

She put a hand on his arm. “Hush, Howard. Just enjoy him making a fool of himself.”

The man was presenting drones of some kind. They looked decent enough, and although he couldn’t see it clearly from where he was sitting, the power source looked familiar so it couldn’t have been that bad. The man himself, unfortunately, was stupid as all get out.

“Is he for real?” he asked Phil.

The agent looked like he was sucking on a lemon. “Mr. Hammer’s intelligence leaves much to be desired. As do his weapons.”

“Really? These look pretty good though. I mean, I bet those guns could bring down a building.”

As he spoke, the drones pointed up and fired at the ceiling. He really needed to stop talking; all it seemed to do was backfire horribly.

After raining glass down on them all, the drones flew upward and began firing down at the crowd. Hammer leapt about the stage helplessly, yelling at them to stop but otherwise not doing much.

“Clint, take them out,” Coulson yelled. “I’ll get Hammer. Mr. and Mrs. Stark, take Anton and vacate the premises.”

Clint pulled his bow from his jacket—how that had gone unnoticed Anton had no idea—and began firing at the drones as he searched for higher ground. Coulson was gone, weaving his way through the seats and making his way through the stage and avoiding drones and bullets. Mr. Stark had an arm around Mrs. Stark’s waist, and carefully escorted her around the drones that Clint had felled. Anton followed them for a moment, but stopped and looked around at the first drone.

No one was paying attention to him. With a grin, he sat down beside it and buried his hands in it. Arc reactor power source, leading to the boots—must have been what made them fly. He yanked the repulsors out of the boots and strapped them to his hands with ripped parts of his tie. The arc reactor he fastened to his chest with bits of wire and torn strips of cloth from his jacket. The abundance of wires in the drone he cannibalized to connect the two.

He had repulsors in his hands, an arc reactor on his chest, and a really, really stupid plan in his head.

The drone was getting its signal from a building. It wasn’t far enough to walk too, but luckily, he had a better idea. Anton scrambled up a cracked building support and perched there, waiting, until a drone flew by. As it passed him, he jumped out and wrenched it open. It jerked, trying to get him off, but he held tight with his legs while he rewired it with his hands and teeth. By the time he was done, he had a nice, slightly lethal robot to ride.

“Take me home, robot!” he cackled, fiddling with the controls slightly. It flipped around in midair, which was absolutely nauseating, but flew full-speed in what he assumed was the right direction. Beneath him, he could see Clint continuing to take out robots. Captain America’s shield flashed through the air, and a moment later he spotted the man himself putting a fist through a drone’s head. Beside him, Natasha was doing that move with her thighs that apparently worked just as well on robots as it did on people.

As he flew over the park, Anton’s head spun around and he jerked the drone around with his knees.

“Ivan,” he growled, spotting the man’s sparking whips and glowing arc reactor. And there, in front of him, the Starks.

Well, his plan just got even more stupid, but what was a guy to do.

“Hey, Ivan!” he hollered, steering the robot down towards him. The man turned, familiar angry scowl already on his face. Anton grinned and pointed his repulsors at his brother. “Look, ma, no hands!”

The repulsor whined as it fired into Ivan’s face, blasting him backwards. He hit a tree with a solid thunk as the drone continued its descent and collided with Ivan in an explosion worthy of television. The man lay on the floor and didn’t get up. Anton, still grinning, closed his eyes in satisfaction.

Around him, Mr. and Mrs. Stark were nervously fussing over him, and someone was talking about calling 911, but he’d just lassoed a drone and ridden it to its fiery death. Right now, Anton just wanted to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Afghanistan has nothing but dirt, dirt, and even more dirt, but it still manages to be interesting. Well, 'interesting' is one way of putting it, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning that there's a brief mention of suicide near the end of the chapter, but not directly related to any main characters.

For a moment, when he woke up, he thought he was back in the Red Room and everything had been a particularly nice dream. It was cold and machines were beeping, as they so often were when they woke him from cryogenic freezing, but when he opened his eyes all he saw was white. Turning his head, he saw Phil and Clint sitting beside him.

“Wow, I wake up in a hospital and you guys just sit there? Some welcoming committee you are,” he said hoarsely. Phil wordlessly handed him a glass of water.

“Ah, Sleeping Beauty awakes—have you seen that movie? Probably not. We should do Disney sometimes. It's not manly at all, but what the hell. After this, you are confined to the house for a month. Jesus Christ, I’ve never been so terrified in my life than when I saw you hitch a ride on that drone,” Clint dramatically pretended to swoon and pressed the back of his hand to his forehead.

“It was _so_ _cool_ ,” Anton breathed. He was grinning just remembering it.

“More like terrifying,” Phil said. “Next time, please, just leave it to us. Natasha was on her way to the Starks, and Captain America had arrived to help with the drones.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever you say,” Anton said. “I was fucking flying.”

“Language,” Phil said.

At a knock on the door, they all looked up. “I heard he was awake,” Mr. Stark said. “Mind if I talk to him for a bit?”

Clint and Phil exchanged a wordless conversation and then, as one, stood and left the room. “We’ll be right outside,” Phil promised as he shut the door behind them.

Mr. Stark sank into the chair with a groan. “I’m getting too old for all this SHIELD craziness,” he muttered. “But that’s beside the point. Right now, I want you to tell me how you made this.”

He placed the repulsor and arc reactor set on the bed, next to Anton. “I cannibalized a drone,” he said. “The repulsors they used to fly were similar to the repulsor I made in your workshop. I thought I could help.”

“You were a great help. It’s more than likely that you saved my life,” he said. “Now, I don’t want you to think of what I’m going to say as thanks for that. You’re a brilliant boy. Not many thirteen-year-olds would think to stop in the middle of a firefight and take apart an enemy weapon because they thought they might be able to help, much less actually carry out a plan. I don’t call people brilliant often, and when I do, I usually want to bring them over to my company. I want to make you the heir to Stark Industries.”

He held up a hand when Anton opened his mouth. “No talking yet. You see, I don’t have a child of my own. My nephew couldn’t think his way out of a paper bag. Ezekiel Stane, in my opinion, is a wicked little brat that could do without being handed everything on a silver platter for once in his life. You are a brilliant young man that jury-rigged an arc reactor out of scraps in my workshop in a few hours, and used that knowledge to his own good later on. I haven’t mentioned this to anyone other than Phil and Clint—and you’re welcome to think about it and talk it over with your family—but I’d like make a public announcement within a few months.”

Anton didn’t even want to think about it. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

Howard raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to think it over?”

“Eh. I’ll think it over when I’m dead,” he said with a wicked grin.

Mr. Stark laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “My kind of guy. I’ll talk to your guardians about making a public announcement. I’d also like to introduce you to some of my business partners. I have a trip to Afghanistan coming up. If Phil and Clint agree, you’re welcome to come along and meet some of the generals I do business with.”

He was pretty sure his mouth was gaping open, but Howard just laughed and beckoned in the two agents to explain the news to them. Clint and Phil had yet another silent conversation via looks and gestures, and then Phil said, “This is actually very well timed. SHIELD has been asking us to start taking on more missions, so . . . if this is what you want, Anton?”

If he took over Stark Industries, he’d get to access that workshop whenever he wanted. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” he said.

“Excellent,” Howard said. “I’ll have my assistant make the arrangements. Now, as for the announcement, Maria actually had some ideas . . .”

He spent a lot of that month talking to reporters with Howard and sitting through various photo shoots as he was stuffed into suit after suit. Maria was in quite a few of the shoots as well, posing behind them or at their sides, and she came to a couple interviews. Maria ran in her own magazines, Howard explained, when Anton asked why she was always off to an interview but never with them.

“Maria and I run in similar yet separate circles, and that’s the way we like it,” he said, sipping an expensive cognac.  “She runs her charity, I run my business. Sometimes the two intersect, sometimes they don’t. I’ll show you a charity gala sometime. I enjoy them myself.”

“Natasha says they’re all about turning people into dancing monkeys,” Anton said.

Howard scoffed. “Natasha has been spending too much time talking to Steve, if you ask me. He’s too much of a Brooklyn boy to appreciate it. I tried to bring him to once and he looked so uncomfortable I told him to just go home. Oh, well. More for the likes of us. More booze and fancy dresses than the eye can see . . . although you’re a little bit young for those. Stick to the hors d'oeuvres or Phil will have my head. I have a feeling they’ll have enough of a fit at the reaction to the announcement. Trust me, it’s going to be great—just not necessarily good.”

When the magazines hit the rack, the Stark family and Anton staring out from the front, the media sent itself into an uproar. Turning the television to any major news station would half the time just land him in front of that same picture of his face, Howard and Maria behind him with their hands on his shoulders.

“The next generation of Stark Industries,” the newscaster said. “Howard Stark recently revealed that his choice of successor went far outside what anyone expected. Rather than the expected choice of Morgan Stark, Howard Stark’s nephew, or Ezekiel Stane, the son of Stark’s business partner Obadiah Stane, Stark revealed that he had chosen an unknown. Thirteen-year-old Anton Romanov, who interned this past year at Stark Industries and appeared with them in photographs from the Stark Expo, recently moved from Russia with his aunt, and was then adopted by an American couple that just so happened to be friends with the Starks, giving young Romanov an in. When asked to elaborate on his choice, Howard Stark said the following.”

The newscaster looked upwards, where a small video of Howard appeared, grumpily shooing away reporters like horseflies. “I chose the person I saw as best for the company. He doesn’t have business experience, but he has more innovation, creativity, and skills than the people my Research and Development team considers hiring. He built an arc reactor when he was six years old, in Siberia. If that’s not talent I don’t know what is.”

The video vanished, leaving the newscaster alone on the screen once again. “Although Stark seems to have utmost faith in his young protégé, other members of his company don’t seem so confident. ‘He’s young and brash,’ an anonymous source said. ‘The first day he was here he created havoc by sprinting full speed through the building. He’s an immature and spoiled brat that was handed a silver spoon thanks to his parents’ friendship with the Starks.’ Obadiah Stane, Stark’s business partner, was not available for comment. Tune in next week for more information.”

The papers weren’t released on a school day, but when he returned to school the following Monday everyone whispered and stared when they thought he wasn’t looking. “Is it true?” Peter asked, running up to Anton. “Did Howard Stark really pick you to take over Stark Industries?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Whoa,” Peter said. “You’re so lucky!”

Lucky, he thought, when faced by hordes of cameramen, wasn’t exactly the word he’d pick. Phil stepped up behind him, though, and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll escort you out,” he said. “I’m still the dean of the school, if you recall. I have some authority here.”

Phil forged their way through, shouting, “Dean of the school!” whenever people tried to get in their way and “No comment!” whenever they tried to ask questions. By sheer force of will he waded through the crowd and led Anton to the car. They sped away from the school, but when he looked behind him, he could see his classmates talking to the reporters gleefully.

He sure hoped they enjoyed their moments of fame. “He’s not even smart,” a large, pimpled boy who had once shoved Anton into a locker said. “He doesn’t even speak English or nothing.”

“I’m paired with him in science class,” small, geeky Peter Parker said. “He’s incredible.”

“Does he speak English?” someone asked.

“Um, well yeah. He does.”

The school seemed evenly split on whether he was cute or hideous, smart or stupid, and even whether or not he spoke English.

“Will I have to give a TV interview?” he asked. The only footage they had of him was that of him walking out of the school, and they seemed eager to get more. At least they hadn’t found out where his therapist’s office was or where he lived yet. He was just waiting to be woken up by the clamor of reporters outside his window. Maybe he could teach Lucky to attack reporters.

“Not now,” Howard said. “I want to get you used to things first, introduce you to some people. We have that trip to Afghanistan once you finish school, after all.”

School, thankfully, was almost over. He just had a few more painful weeks of wading through reporters and kids that only wanted to make friends with him now that he was on TV, and then he was packing a backpack for the trip and being driven to the airfield.

“Remember,” Clint said. “If you need anything, just call. We’ll be in Puente Antiguo for a mission so it’ll be a different time zone, but we’re always available. And stay with Stark, understand? We don’t need you running around on your own in a warzone getting your ass shot.”

As they pulled up to the airplane, Anton reached over and quickly gave him a hug. “Say bye to Phil for me, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. You know he’d be here if he hadn’t already been shipped out,” Clint said. “I’ve got to catch up. In a few days, someone will be here to get you. If it isn’t me or Phil, it’ll probably be Steve or Natasha. And no blowing things up if they aren’t supposed to be blown up!”

Throwing one last wave behind him, Anton grabbed his backpack and took the stairs up the plane two at a time. “Stark?” a man asked when he entered. “Oh, no. Romanov, wasn’t it?”

“Anton,” he said, shaking the man’s hand.

“Colonel James Rhodes, military liaison to Stark Industries. I hear you’re going to be my boss when you grow up.” Rhodes seemed nice enough, if a bit formal.

“That’s the plan,” Anton said. He took a seat next to Rhodes, dumping his backpack between them.

“We’re waiting on Stark now,” he said. “The man seems to think that just because it’s his private jet we don’t have to leave on time. If he didn’t fly himself I’d say he didn’t know that flight paths existed. We’ll only have to wait a half hour, tops. Mrs. Stark is good at getting him out here most days.”

Sure enough, Howard stumbled in only fifteen minutes later, bleary-eyed from a late night of either drinking or working. It was hard to tell. Either way, he was tired enough to collapse on a bed in the back of the plane for the entire flight, leaving Rhodes to read through his various files and Anton to entertain himself with the handheld game Clint had given him for the flight. Somewhere over the Atlantic he drifted off, only waking up when Rhodes shook his shoulder.

“Up and at ‘em, soldier. Time to get out and see the dirt.”

That, Anton mused as he followed them out of the plane and into the Humvee that would take them to the test sight, was a very good way of putting it. Afghanistan, it seemed, had bucketloads of dirt, piles of dirt, and even more dirt under all that.

“That is a fuckton of dirt,” he said in Russian. The soldier sitting in the passenger seat choked on her water. Apparently, she spoke the language.

“Language,” Howard muttered, also in Russian. “Do I need to tell your how to behave? Phil said he had that covered.”

“Don’t worry,” Anton said. “I got the lecture. Multiple times. Keep my mouth shut, keep my hands to myself, and keep a smile on my face for the cameras.”

“We have a winner,” Howard said. “Now try remembering that and actually putting it into action. We’re not the only ones here to speak and understand Russian; we don’t have our own private little language, and you need to keep that in mind when you switch between the two. Stick to English if you can.”

Anton sighed and switched over just to say, “Yes, sir” with sufficient sarcasm to make his dear old Papa rise from the grave and smack him one for sass. It satisfied Howard, however, and they spent the rest of their ride in silence until someone put on the radio and began blasting music.

“ACDC?” Anton asked eagerly.

Howard groaned and thumped his head against the seat. “Not this noise.”

Said noise accompanied them all the way to their testing site. Howard was all too eager to escape, even when the only thing he’d find out there was a bunch of generals hungry for his weapons. He greeted them all by name and introduced Anton to them all, and then introduced to them the Jericho missile.

If anything was meant to explode, it was the Jericho. “Incredible, Howard,” one general said once the demonstration had finished. “Just as I expected.”

“You’ve got this one here to thank for part of it. He did half the programming on that himself,” Howard said, clapping Anton on the back. He recalled, vaguely, the paper he had corrected, the one that Howard had discarded because he thought it would never work.

The generals all gave him appraising looks. “I see we have a lot to look forward to in the future,” one said. He couldn’t help but feel a bit like a piece of choice fillet mignon, ready for the taking. He could only hope that the one that ended up with him didn’t chew him to pieces.

Demonstration over, they turned to the Humvees. Howard immediately split to the one without a radio, but Anton slipped into the other one before anyone could protest. No one noticed, not even Rhodes, who climbed into the seat in front of Howard without a second thought.

He grinned and turned to the young soldier next to him. “So, ACDC?” he asked. His companions grinned, and the one nearest to the radio dutifully turned it up.

They’d moved on from awkwardly sitting next to each other to taking selfies with each other when the Humvee in the front flipped over in a cloud of smoke and flame. He could barely tell what anyone was hearing; the air was rife with screaming and bullets.

“Stay here,” the young soldier bellowed as he jumped outside, only to be shot down the moment he did. Anton quickly ducked down and crept out of the Humvee. He wasn’t about to be a sitting duck in there, not when it could be blown up any minute. It was better to stay low and out of the way. He skirted the edge of the fighting, keeping an eye out for Howard or Rhodes. He’d just noticed Howard half-buried under dead bodies but keeping a careful eye out when he heard the bomb land next to him. His eyes landed on the logo—Stark—and he tried to scramble away but tripped on an abandoned gun and fell there, staring, and could only turn his head away as the bomb exploded into shrapnel.

He didn’t remember much after that.

Pain. Heat. Light. Pain. Someone screaming—him. Hands reaching into his chest. His ribs being carved open. Someone telling him to be still. Pain, then blissful darkness.

When he woke up, he thought for sure that he was back in the Red Room. It was cold and dark, and there were strange wires touching him—the scientists liked to test things sometimes. He reached up and pulled the line out of his nose, and then reached for the wires on his chest that sprouted out of a large bandage there.

Firm hands pulled his hands away. “Don’t touch,” a man said.

Anton opened his eyes. Not the Red Room; the Red Room didn’t have caves. He followed the wires leading out of his chest to a car battery sitting near him. “What did you do?”

“I saved your life,” the man said. Anton remembered—the Stark bomb. And now shrapnel traveling towards his heart, and an electromagnet placed in his chest where previously there had been bone and lung in order to stop it. Well, he wouldn’t be running marathons any time soon.

“Where are we?” he croaked.

The man reached over and handed him a glass of water.

“You are with the Ten Rings. Terrorists. They seem to believe that you are the son of Howard Stark, but I had thought that the Stark’s son died long ago.”

After downing the water, Anton said, “I’m not their son.”

“Ah. I would keep that to yourself, then,” the man said 

“Why?” he asked.

“Because you do not want to end up dead. For now, you are here because they believe that you are able to build Stark’s weapons,” he said.

“Well, I could. I’ve seen his blueprints enough,” Anton said.

The man hummed thoughtfully. “Then maybe all is not lost for you.” He held out a hand for Anton to shake. “My name is Yinsen.”

“Anton Romanov,” he said.

The door slammed open. “Say nothing and do only as I do,” Yinsen said, and then they were surrounded by angry men with guns. Anton was familiar with this, at least.

“They want you to build the Jericho missile,” Yinsen told him.

Anton didn’t know if the leader spoke English, but he looked him in the eyes and said, “No.”

Then, naturally, they moved onto torture, dragging him through the cave while he clutched the battery in his arms. He was dunked repeatedly into a pool of tepid, dirty water while they screamed in his ear, “Jericho! Jericho!” He gasped for breath whenever they yanked him up, and was sometimes still gasping when they shoved him back down.

But he didn’t give in.

“I had thought that a child would give into their demands very quickly,” Yinsen said when they dumped Anton back in the room after the fourth day.

He placed the battery connected to his chest on the small cot and curled up around it. Yinsen placed their thin blanket over him. “I’ve been trained with withstand torture,” he said dully. “This is nothing. They’d get bored of it before I gave in.”

Yinsen hummed thoughtfully. “I find it curious that the Merchant of Death has chosen someone such as yourself, a nobody from Russia, to succeed him.”

“I’ve got what he wants,” Anton said.

“So do many other people,” Yinsen said.

Anton shrugged. “Then I guess I got lucky.” There seemed to be no shortage of that in his life, at least. Lucky to go to America, lucky to be taken in by Phil and Clint. “You have a family, Yinsen?”

“Mhm. And I will see them when I leave here,” he said.

“Cheers to that,” he said. He just needed to get out of here first.

When they took him outside and showed him the abundance of Stark weaponry outside, he had his idea. He only had a vague idea of how to build a Jericho so, yeah, not doing as they asked. They’d be more likely to kill him than let him go afterwards anyways. But what he’d made at the Stark Expo, now that had potential. Of course, he didn’t have pre-made flying drones lying around this time, but he was pretty sure he could rig something up.

Anton was going to make his own flying suit of armor. He was officially the coolest kid in the world.

It was nice to have his own workshop, even if he was constantly being watched by the Ten Rings. Yinsen was there too, but he knew enough about what they were doing to be helpful. He came in handy again when it was time to put the plan into action.

He’d put an arc reactor in his chest, he’d made a flying suit of armor, and he was going to blow up a terrorist ring in Afghanistan. It was bloody and horrible, but he’d seen it all before. He remembered, as a child, Yakov breaking the neck of one of the Red Room operatives when she had failed her task. She’d been around the age that he was now; he’d been eight years old. He’d watched people shoot each other down on training exercises.

He’d seen plenty of death. Sometimes people seemed to forget that. Natasha, especially, half of the time seemed convinced that he’d spent part of his time frozen and the other part working on machines. When Yinsen went down, he stopped only briefly to talk to him in the moments before he died before moving on.

Not many thirteen-year-olds could say they’d almost single-handedly destroyed a terrorist weapon’s cache and lived to tell the tale. While the desert went up in flames around him, he took off, propelled through the air by the rudimentary thrusters he’d put together. They ran out of fuel eventually, but he was smaller than an adult so he went farther than, say, Yinsen would have. The Ten Rings’ hideout was long out of sight by the time he crash-landed in the hot desert sand.

After that, all there was to do was walk. And walk. And walk. Half the time he didn’t even know if he was going towards the cave he’d been taken or away from it. There were no landmarks in the desert. At night, he went by the stars to point himself in about the right direction, but in the blinding sunlight all he could do was stumble in a vaguely straight line.

Upon hearing the helicopter pass overhead, Anton sank to his knees and laughed so hard he cried. Someone picked him up and yelled, “Agent Coulson, we found him!” Steve, going by the voice, was the one taking him to the helicopter.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Clint said. Anton looked over and saw him in the pilot’s seat, with Natasha next to him. Steve sat next to Anton, who, he noticed when he looked over, had been put next to Phil.

“Hey, what took you guys?” he asked blearily.

“Be quiet and drink your water. I have half a mind to ground you for the rest of your life,” Phil said.

Natasha squinted at his chest. “Anton, what is that?”

“Arc reactor. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. I made sure it wouldn’t blow me up or anything.” None of them looked reassured in the slightest. “It’s keeping shrapnel out of my heart.”

Phil groaned and rubbed his temples. “Alright. First things first. You are going to a hospital. Then we’re going to debrief.”

Right, debriefing. That, at least, was something he was familiar with. “Whatever you say, old man. Just let me get some sleep first.”

They let him sleep all the way through the trip to the army base, and only woke him up when the doctors wanted to ask him about the arc reactor. That, at least, he wished he had Yinsen around for. The man had done most of the structural work there. Apparently, it had involved taking out large parts of his ribs and lungs.

“That’s going to cause problems when you’re older,” Coulson said as he flipped through the x-rays.

“At least SHIELD has good insurance,” Clint said, “because I can tell we’re going to have a lot of hospital trips in the future.”

“Stop talking about it. I want to sleep,” Anton moaned. “Tell me about Puente Antiguo or wherever you went.”

Neither of them brought up that they’d been back from Puente Antiguo for nearly three months. Clint just said, “Story time, huh? Well, Phil saw more than I did. You tell him.”

So Phil told him about Norse Gods and magical hammers and the bifrost. Anton stayed awake for the first part, but drifted off as Thor began to battle the Destroyer. They were back to talking about the repercussions of having an arc reactor buried in his chest by the time he woke up again, so he said, “Do you want to debrief?” just to make them stop talking about it. He had to tell them every little detail about his stay with the Ten Rings, but at least they weren’t constantly bringing up the weight in his chest. At the end of his story, they looked so troubled that it was clear any potential issues with the arc reactor had been pushed to the back of their minds for the moment.

“I need to talk to Stark about this,” Phil said. “Clint?”

Clint settled down in the chair next to Anton’s hospital bed. “I’ll be right here.” Once Phil had left, he grinned at Anton. “So, a suit of armor, huh? Pretty cool. I mean, I think you might lead Phil to an early grave, but still.”

“It was amazing,” he said. “You should’ve seen it, Clint. I bet it would be even better with the repulsors I made at Stark Industries.”

“Which you are not going to test out,” Clint said. “Phil would have both of our heads if I let you even think about it. Rest, then school. We need to celebrate your birthday too, since you spent it in Afghanistan. Skipping your own birthday party, man, what’s up with that? We got you presents and everything.”

“We can party once I get out of the hospital,” Anton said.

They kept him in the hospital for a week, and then instructed him to keep visiting his therapist every other week and stay home and get plenty of rest. Naturally, that same night Phil and Clint threw him a wild birthday party. He was pretty sure everybody he’d ever met turned up; he even saw Nick Fury lurking by the punch bowl. Steve and Natasha were playing cards in a corner with Anton’s therapist and some other SHIELD agents that Phil and Clint were friends with. Maria Hill and Sitwell, he thought. Maria Stark had started talking to Peter at some point. Howard had been with them at first, but after a while came to stand next to Anton.

“So, a flying suit of armor,” he said. “Ingenious.”

“Thanks. It’d be better with repulsors,” Anton said.

Howard smirked at him. “I just so happen to have what you need to make some repulsors in my lab.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Anton asked.

“If it’s something that would have Clint and Phil beheading me at high noon, then yeah, I’m thinking what you’re thinking,” Howard said.

Every day after school, Anton went up to Howard’s workshop and began to put together his armor. They kept it on the down-low, of course; whenever someone else was in the room, they worked on developing an AI to help Anton control the armor they made in the rest of the time.

“I’m making a new arc reactor first,” Anton said as they sat over their planning board. “Then the repulsors.”

“Make a helmet,” Howard said. “If you brain yourself, Clint and Phil will never forgive me.”

The only part of this Clint and Phil would approve of was the new arc reactor, but Anton didn’t exactly intend to tell them what he was up to other than the bare minimum.

Anton finished the new arc reactor while Howard was in a meeting. He was alone, but decided to hop up on the table and switch out the arc reactors anyways. Howard wouldn’t have been much help anyways; his hands were too big.

The arc reactor design was ingenious, really, especially considering it had been made in a cave. The metal in his chest had been designed to be adjusted as he grew, and the arc reactor itself was relatively easy to replace. This new version was even easier—you just had to have small enough hands. At the moment, Anton did, so he took out the reactor, yanked out the electromagnet, and attached the new reactor before he could slip into cardiac arrest.

Satisfied with a job well done, he looked up and saw Obadiah Stane looking at him from the door. Slowly, Anton slipped off the table and picked up his shirt.

“Howard isn’t here right now,” he said.

Stane’s eyes were still fixed on his chest. “Yes, of course, my boy. I’ll have to talk to him later.” The man didn’t leave, though, just slowly approached Anton. Anton stood in front of him, refusing to shrink back from him, and stared him directly in the eyes. After a moment, chuckling, Stane patted him on the shoulder.

“Tell Howard I stopped by,” he said.

When Howard returned, Anton didn’t mention a thing. “Replaced the arc reactor,” he said, waving the old one at Howard. “Here, catch, Butterfingers.” He tossed it to Howard’s helper bot, which dropped it and then whined pitifully.

The helper bot Anton had made and programmed before they’d gone to Afghanistan rolled over and looked almost quizzically down at the reactor. “Well, pick it up, Dummy,” Anton said. For a moment the bot didn’t respond, but then seized the reactor and whizzed off.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” Howard asked.

Anton shrugged and made a wiggling motion with his hand. “Eh. Maybe. Probably. I mean, he can’t do much to it. I meant for him to dispose of it, but whatever.” As if sensing that he was being discussed, the bot rolled over and nudged Anton’s shoulder.

Howard sighed. “That bot is not quite right in the programming. You better fix those errors for the AI in the armor.”

Anton grinned and rubbed Dummy’s metal arm. “He doesn’t mean it, Dummy. He’s just an old grump.”

“Says the kid that names robots Dummy and Butterfingers,” Howard muttered. “Now get to work or get out. We don’t have time for games. I thought you wanted to get this done.”

“Yes, sir,” Anton said. He set to work on one boot with Dummy assisting, while Howard worked on the other.

They worked on the repulsors and accompanying parts together, but Anton designed the helmet on his own. He wanted to see how it looked before he did it. Part of him was convinced that it was a bit childish, still.

He’d drawn it almost a year ago, when he had refused to talk to his therapist so all she had him do was draw. “Draw something ferocious,” she said. “Something to protect you when you’re scared.”

He’d thought of Yakov and his metal arm, and had drawn a man made out of metal. His eyes glowed pale blue because there hadn’t been another color that reminded Anton as much of the cold ice and snow of Russia, but his body was red and yellow like fire. The mouth of the mask was set in an angry scowl fit to unsettle anyone that tried to oppose it.

It was a child’s fantasy, but he went ahead and created the entire thing on the computer, using a gold-titanium alloy for the base and painting parts of it red to complete the image. “Not bad,” Howard said when he looked it over. “Too loud and garish though. You’re throwing stealth right out the window.”

“No backseat designing,” Anton said, waving him off. “Besides, I’m in a flying suit of armor with a glowing centerpiece. I’m pretty sure stealth was dead from the beginning.”

“Fine, fine. Don’t come running to me if people think you look like an idiot,” Howard muttered.

When they finished the boots, Anton strapped them on before Howard could even begin to tell him to wait. “Phil and Clint are coming to get you in fifteen minutes,” he warned.

“They can wait. Live a little, Howard,” Anton said. “Come on, come on. Howard, man the controls. Dummy, get the fire extinguisher.”

Howard’s eyebrows rose in alarm. “The fire extinguisher? Kid, are you sure about this?”

“Yep, yep, come on, let’s go,” Anton said, pulling on the helmet he’d been keeping ready just for this moment. “Ten percent.”

“That’s a bit high.”

“It’s ten percent. Come on, go for it!” Howard sighed, pressed the button, and then Anton was flying, flipping head-over-heels until he collided with the wall. He tumbled to the ground and lay there, hurting all over and laughing hysterically.

“Shit, shit. Kid, you okay?” Howard pulled off the helmet and looked at him anxiously.

Anton sat up, still laughing. “That was incredible! Man, if you weren’t so old I’d tell you to try it out.”

“Watch your mouth,” Howard said. His face was deathly pale. “I almost had a heart attack. I think that’s enough for today.”

He seemed one little bruise away from calling it off altogether, but Anton pestered him until he agreed to try again at a much, much lower level. Eventually they made it to a level where Anton could hover around the room with only minor mishaps. Still, Howard watched anxiously, hands on the controls even when Anton finished the AI that could manage the armor based on Anton’s voice commands and his own learning abilities.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the AI said

“Oh my God, he’s British,” Howard said.

“Not exactly,” Anton laughed. “He’s Just A Rather Very Intelligent System. JARVIS for short.”

Howard gave him an odd look. “You’re naming him JARVIS?”

“Yeah. Sounds like a good name for a robot butler,” Anton said. “I’m planning to have him help me with a lot more things than just the armor, so he is kind of like a butler. I bet I could even install him in my house if Clint and Phil let me mess around a bit. What about it?”

“I had a butler named Jarvis when Maria and I were just married, that’s all. He retired back in the ‘70s though. We stopped needing a butler when we moved out of the Fifth Avenue place.”

That, Anton recalled, had been when they’d lost their son, as Phil had explained when telling Anton about Maria Stark’s work. The Maria Stark Foundation worked out of the mansion; nobody had actually lived there for around forty years.

“It’s a good name, though,” Howard finally said. “Jarvis was an excellent butler. Great at keeping Tony out from underfoot.”

Anton decided not to bring up the way Howard’s eyes slid towards the alcohol cabinet in the workshop at the mention of his son, instead saying, “Come on, let’s get to work on fabricating this armor.”

“We can let the machines take care of that,” Howard said. “We have your first gala to get to tonight. Get home and get ready; a car will be there to pick you up at eight.”

Right. He’d forgotten. Now, he had an evening of being shoved into a suit and fussed over by Phil before he was released into the arms of the adoring public. All the other gala attendees were also well-known or famous in some way, though, so the worst part would be the press. And that wouldn’t be so bad.

When the car rolled up to the event, he took it all back. Howard straightened his tie and looked over at Anton. “Big smile, kid,” he said before shoving open the door and leading Anton outside. The lights flashing in his eyes blinded him and he could barely hear anything over the roar of people.

“Here we have Mr. Howard Stark and his young protégé and successor Anton Romanov arriving at tonight’s gala, ladies and gentlemen,” he caught a newscaster saying before she was drowned out by a rush of questions. Anton couldn’t hear any of them to respond to, so he just smiled and waved for the cameras.

Even in the hall, he didn’t escape from the questions. Howard shuffled him around from person to person, introducing him to business partners and investors and shareholders. He only escaped by saying he needed to go to the bathroom, and then slipped off to sit at the bar.

“I’ll have a coke,” he said to the bartender. He sipped it idly as he surveyed the room, legs swinging as he perched on the barstool. He didn’t look over at first when a young blonde woman took a seat next to him, but did glance over when she called out his name.

“Christine Everhart,” she said. “Vanity Fair. So, tell me, how does it feel to know you’re going to be one of the richest little boys in the world?”

Idly, he sipped his soda. “You know, I don’t think I inherit the money with the company,” he said at last.

“But as the future CEO of Stark Industries, your income will be one of the highest in the country,” she said.

He decided not to mention that he currently earned ten dollars an hour. “I’ll look forward to it.”

“It’s well known that recently you were kidnapped in Afghanistan for three months.” If she asked him what happened in Afghanistan, bad publicity or no, he was going to punch her. “Knowing that, I wanted to ask what direction you intend to take the company in when it comes to accountability for this.”

She spread a stack of papers across the bar. A town, attacked by a group with members that looked very familiar to Anton. They also all happened to be armed with Stark weapons. “Where were these taken?” he asked.

“A town called Gulmira.”

Gulmira. He remembered Gulmira. Yinsen had been from there; his family had been killed there. Anton handed the pictures back to her. “I’m going to stop it,” he told her.

Before she could ask him any more questions, a large, heavy hand pressed down on his shoulder. “That’s enough of that, I think,” Obadiah Stane said.

Howard stepped up to them, a glass of some strong, amber alcohol in his hand. “Ms. Everhart. I should have expected to find you hounding my successor. Lovely piece you wrote on me, by the way. Very inflammatory.”

She tipped her glass of champagne at him with a sickly-sweet smile. “It was my pleasure, Mr. Stark.”

“Well, I’m afraid I have to free Anton here from your clutches. Come on, I told Phil and Clint I’d get you home by eleven.”

“Hey, I wasn’t done with that,” Anton protested as he was pulled away from his soda. “What’s the rush?”

“Apparently my nephew managed to sneak into the party. I’d rather leave before I, or worse, you, run into him. He’s a very unpleasant character,” he said. “And I really did say I’d get you home by eleven. I seem to remember there being some kind of rule about children and midnight. Or was that gremlins? Ah, well, what’s the difference.”

They didn’t linger with the press, but instead headed straight to the car, where Howard’s driver was waiting. “Take Anton home, Hogan,” Howard said. “I’ll call when I need you again.”

Once he was gone, Anton grinned at the driver. “Hey, can we get hamburgers, Happy?”

Happy laughed. “Kid, I am right behind you. One hamburger coming right up.”

Anton ended up coming home closer to midnight than eleven, but Phil and Clint were still waiting up for him when he came home. “Welcome back,” Phil said, looking up from the television and giving Anton the usual once-over. “How was the party?”

“Boring. Happy took me out for hamburgers though,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”

He had a lot to look forward to in the morning—namely, testing the suit. Howard kept a news station droning on in the background as they got Anton into the suit. “I like to hear public opinions,” he said. “It helps to know what angle I should go for on my next interview.”

Anton flipped through a magazine with his free hand while Howard fitted one arm of the suit to his other hand. “Christine Everhart says I’m spoiled, naïve, and likely to lead the company to ruin.”

Howard scoffed. “The woman would sooner keel over before she wrote a good word about Stark industries. Don’t take it personally. She’s hated me since she met me.” He muttered something that sounded like ‘murdered baby article’ before sipping his usual glass of alcohol and shutting up. Anton decided it was better not to ask.

On the television, a woman was standing by streams of refugees, apparently somewhere near Gulmira. “The terrorists there have Stark weapons,” he said.

Howard moved on to attach the chestplate. “I know. It’s being dealt with.” He held the helmet back for a moment to look Anton in the eyes. “Don’t go doing anything stupid.”

Anton nodded and grabbed the helmet. “Yeah, sure.” His voice sounded deeper through the voice modulator. “Nothing stupid.”

He was going to do something stupid. Namely, go to Gulmira and blow up some terrorists. He’d been a good boy recently; it was about time to have some fun. Howard was yelling in his ear, panicked, as he left the United States, but Anton just laughed.

“Take it easy, Howard. I used to do this all the time as a kid,” he said.

“That doesn’t make me feel any better!”

After a while, he fell silent except for the occasional disgruntled mutter of “You’re making me drink myself into an early grave, boy.” At least he was drunk enough to not make a fuss when Anton landed in Gulmira; he could really do without the distraction.

He’d last been in a firefight when first escaping the Ten Rings. Before that, the last fight he’d been in was a training exercise in the Red Room. He’d been given half an hour to kill three boys he’d eaten breakfast with only an hour before or else watch them be tortured to death. They’d failed the Red Room continuously, after all, and good things never happened to operatives that failed the Red Room. He had quickly learned how not to fail.

He’d killed them all in half the time. Yakov had been proud. He had a feeling Yakov would be proud now, as he took down all the Ten Rings operatives in Gulmira. He left one of them to the villagers, and then flew off again in search of their weapons cache. Moments later, that too was up in flames, and then he was off and flying back to the United States.

He’d only been in the air for a short while when JARVIS called out, “Incoming,” and Anton was forced into a barrel roll to avoid an attack from a military jet.

“What the hell was that? JARVIS! Howard!”

“Shit,” Howard said. “The military’s on you, kid, and they aren’t happy. Look alive; I’ve got to take a call.”

Anton avoided a few more attacks before decided to get out of the way and take cover on the underbelly of one of the planes. Over the intercom, he could hear Howard saying, “Obadiah, this is not the time. No, I’m not drunk!”

The plane turned, and his hiding spot was revealed. They shook him off and he was sent flying through the wing of a plane. The pilot ejected but something was wrong, his parachute wasn’t deploying. The other jet was still gunning for him but Anton flew down anyways to yank it free, ignoring how the pilot tried to escape.

The parachute deployed. Satisfied, Anton decided to get out of there before they decided to try shooting him down again.

“You just took twenty years off my life,” Howard said when he returned. “And I don’t have a whole lot left.”

Anton wriggled as the bots began to strip him of the armor. “Hey, I’m totally fine.”

“Those are bullet holes,” Howard said, pointing to the chest plate before Dummy dropped it with a crash.

“Bullet holes in the armor. The rest of me is totally fine. Which was kind of the point,” Anton said.

“I didn’t think you were going to actually go into an _active warzone_ to fight _terrorists_ ,” Howard said.

“If I’d told you, you wouldn’t have even let me try on the suit.” He winced as Dummy fumbled over one of the arm plates. “Hey, watch it. That’s no way to treat the guy who created you.”

He was braced against Butterfingers while Howard and Dummy pulled off the boots when Phil walked in. “I thought so,” he said. “Anton Romanov, you have a lot of explaining to do.”

Anton jerked and fumbled for a better grip as his hand slipped from Butterfinger’s arm. He tripped over backwards, nearly braining Howard with one knee while Butterfingers grabbed at the other in some misguided attempt to steady him. “Not a good time,” Anton said crossly. “Couldn’t you have waited a bit?”

“Yes, but this way you can’t get away. Now, you are going to tell me every little thing you have been up too. Both of you.”

It would take a far better man than the two of them to withstand Phil Coulson’s steely-eyed stare. Anton spilled everything, words pouring out of his mouth as quickly as possible so he could hurry up and get out of the armor.

“Howard, you and I are going to be having words later,” Phil said. “Anton, get out of that. We’re going home.”

As if sensing the urgency, the bots barely fumbled over the armor, and Anton only had to withstand thirty awkward minutes. Phil escorted him from the building without another word and drove home in silence.

Clint was watching a movie when they arrived, but Phil turned it off. “Anton, tell him.”

So, he not only had to go through it once with Phil, but again with Clint. It was even more painful the second time, with both of their eyes glued to him, not even blinking as he retold the story.

“Wow. First of all, fifty shades of not okay.” Clint leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. “Christ, where to even begin?”

Phil patted the sofa between him and Clint and, once Anton was seated, said, “Anton, did you think that this was a good idea?”

“I’m equipped to handle combat situations and had the ability to get over there and get out relatively unharmed. Worst case scenario I’d take a couple bullets, but they were unlikely to get through the armor. I knew what was going on, and I had the ability to stop it, so I decided I should go for it,” he explained.

Phil nodded. “Now, if this was such an excellent idea, why didn’t you tell Clint or I?”

“Because you’d be pissed,” he said. “Like you are now.”

“Not pissed exactly,” Clint corrected. “But go on. Why would we be pissed?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I mean, you don’t like when I get in fights at school, and this is like that to the nth power.”

“We don’t like it because it worries us when you purposefully put yourself in harm’s way,” Phil said. “One of the actions that SHIELD does not condone is the use of child soldiers. At the age you are now, when you take actions like this, you fall into that category. There is a very good reason why we don’t allow children your age to be in war.”

“It’s not a big deal. I’ve been doing this since I was eight.” He drew his knees up around himself and stared down at them. He refused to look at either of the men next to him.

“You’ve never told us exactly what the Red Room put you through. And I’m not asking you to tell us now. But I want you to try to understand that it was not okay for them to take children as young as eight and use them for their own ends. We’ve come across Red Room operatives before, Anton. None of them with your exact circumstances, of course, but some around your age or younger. They were safely placed with families as equipped to help them as possible. Only a third of the children we’ve helped are still alive today.”

“I’ve seen them,” Clint spoke up. “Sometimes they’re happy. Mostly they’re miserable. Sometimes they’re a second away from shooting themselves in the head because they can’t deal with what they’ve done. We’d like to prevent you from joining one of those last two groups.”

“I’m fine,” Anton said.

“We want to keep it that way,” Phil said. “Our goal is to keep you as safe and happy as possible. You need to keep in mind that you’re not the only one around to deal with this problem. Howard has been looking into it. SHIELD is looking into it. We know what we’re doing. This is our job. Your job is to go to school, have fun at the workshop, and stay out of danger.”

“Trust me, you don’t know stress until you see the fucking military trying to shoot your kid out of the sky. I thought I was gonna faint,” Clint said.

Phil knelt on the ground and looked into Anton’s eyes over his knees. “No more flying into warzones in a suit of armor,” he said. “Okay?”

Anton nodded stiffly. “Yeah. Okay.”

Phil’s eyes softened and he reached up and pulled Anton into a tight hug. “I was so scared for you,” he whispered. His voice sounded choked.

Anton didn’t want to see either of them cry, so he pulled away and backed out of the room, leaving the two of them alone. He stopped just outside the door, though, to see if they said anything else.

“That kid is going to send me to an early grave,” Clint groaned. There was no reply from Phil. “Hey, don’t worry. He’s okay. He’s home. We’ve got him.”

Anton glanced behind him, but quickly looked away when he caught the two of them sharing a kiss. “Yes,” he heard Phil say as he escaped into his room. “But for how long?” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil and Clint said he couldn't take the suit out, but they never said he couldn't keep working on it. Good thing, too. Something is rotten in Stark Industries . . .

Okay, so no more taking the suit out. Judging by the way Howard was acting, he’d been given a very stern talking to about putting minors in danger. Half the time he avoided the workshop, and the other half he stayed on the complete opposite side of the room. Anton almost got more work done when he was gone than when he was there; at least when he was gone he wasn’t busy boozing up the place, and he wasn’t around to stop Anton from actually working on the armor. Howard seemed to have suddenly been inundated with more meetings than he’d had in the past month.

The day Obadiah Stane appeared, Howard had just left for a meeting—very important, likely to take at least three hours. Anton barely had time to turn before he was paralyzed, unable to even look in another direction.

“You know, Romanov,” Stane said. “I always thought your story was a bit fishy. But Howard and Maria ate it up—they have a bit of a soft spot for brown-haired, brown-eyed boys—so I was willing to let it go. But then you had to go and make Howard so impressed with you that he made you the heir to his entire company. Now that, that just wouldn’t do. Howard likes to think he has business sense, but he doesn’t have what it takes. I know enough to know that making you the future CEO is a decision destined for failure. You know, people aren’t even sure you speak English. Not exactly what a company looks for in a CEO.”

He strolled closer to Anton. “So, I paid that group to take care of you—oh, yes, that was me. They, however, heard that you’d developed the Jericho and thought you’d be more useful alive. A shame for all of us they didn’t just kill you where you stood.”

Stane reached out and patted Anton’s cheek. “At least then, they wouldn’t give your poor parents false hope. They must have been trying for years to adopt before they landed with you. It's so hard, after all, for people like them . . . I’m sure they’ll be absolutely devastated. Just like Howard and Maria when their poor baby boy went missing. Such a shame, that.” His tone made it clear he thought it was more a stroke of luck than a shame.

“Howard’s been looking into me, though, so I’ve got to run. I hope your daddies don’t cry too much when they find your body.”

His device cut straight through Anton’s shirt and latched onto the reactor beneath it. Stane twisted it sharply and yanked it out, then left without a backwards glance. Anton lay there, unable to move until the paralysis wore off and he collapsed from the chair, gasping for breath.

He didn’t have time to make another reactor. Maybe, he had time to get to the elevator and fine Howard to tell him. He stumbled towards the door, steadying himself on any available surface. When he rested a hand on Butterfinger’s arm, the bot reached out and snagged one of his belt loops.

“Not . . . a good time to play,” he gasped, trying to push the bot away. It held fast, only occasionally whirring and chirping.

“Sir,” JARVIS finally said. “Look up.”

Up, in front of him, away from the ground—Dummy. Dummy’s arm. In his arm, the arc reactor. His old one. Anton grinned, reached out with an unsteady hand, and slid it into his chest. “Good boy,” he breathed. “Now come on. We gotta find Stane.”

“I have taken the liberty of tracking his car through the city,” JARVIS said. “If you would allow me, I can lead you to him.”

“Excellent. Now, who thinks we can get me into the armor in record time?”

At least Howard’s avoidance had let him create new armor in secret. That was a handy benefit, even if Phil and Clint were probably going to lock him in his bedroom for the rest of his life. Without Howard’s help, getting the armor on did take a bit longer, but it wasn’t too long before he was out of the building, following JARVIS’ directions.

Anton realized where they were going halfway through the flight. “Hang on. Isn’t that the old Stark building? I thought that place was just somewhere for them to show off the arc reactor now.”

“It does have some labs, sir. And if I may, it seems that there is indeed activity at the location.”

Yeah, activity was one way of putting it. Although ‘giant robot almost three times his size’ was more like it.

“This is gonna be fun,” Anton said.

“Sir, I do not think that word means what you think it means,” JARVIS said.

As he launched into the fight with Stane, Anton decided that, nope, fun meant exactly what he thought it meant. Attack, defend, attack again. He was fighting for his life, but hey, that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy beating up a bad guy. He was getting beat up in return, but not so badly that he couldn’t enjoy the fight just a bit. He could have done without the screaming civilians and the mom running him over with a minivan, though. That was when it began to get less fun and more terrifying. He had to end this—fast.

He glanced towards the building. Everybody knew that arc reactors were highly explosive.

Anton let Obadiah hurl him through the walls of the building, landing near the control panel for the arc reactor. He scrambled to his feet and backed up quickly as Stane strode forward.

“Anton, Anton, Anton. Little boys just never learn,” he chuckled. “Always getting into one mess after another. It would have been so much easier for you if you’d just sat back and died up in Howard’s lab. I’d planned to plant evidence to frame him and everything. Two dead boys in one family is a bit much, after all.”

There, a distraction. “Did you kill Tony Stark?”

As expected, the man paused. “No,” Stane said eventually. “I’d planned to deal with him when he was older. The boy could have been manipulated; I’d planned to dispose of Howard and take the role of mentor towards his son, then take care of him when he started getting too big for his britches. As it was, his disappearance worked just as well. Poor Howard and Maria, so heartbroken—hardly fit to keep a close eye on the company, and now with no one to succeed them. But oh, there’s the old friend Obi, there to take over while they recover.”

“Do you know who did?” Anton asked. Only a little bit more . . .

“I wish I did. I’d like to offer the man that did it a medal!” Stane laughed. “Starks have plenty of enemies, boy. It could have been anyone. People like to blame the Russians, but that’s the Cold War talking. It was more likely some jealous business competitor hoping that the Stark line would die out and their company would rise to the top. Heck, for all we know, it was some overzealous kidnapper that wanted to make a quick buck but got a little too rough with the kid. Either way, he’s out of the picture. This isn’t the time to worry about dead little boys, Anton. You’re about to become one yourself.”

Anton grinned at him. “Not today!” He slammed the button and threw himself out of the way. His smaller, lighter form was quickly propelled forwards while Stane was still turning around. Anton kept moving, not looking back even for a moment, pushed on by the explosion he could see out of the corner of his eyes. It caught up with him, eventually, and he flew forwards, soaring through the air until he hit the ground and tumbled over it for a few cycles

He stopped in front of a familiar pair of shiny shoes. Grinning, he flipped up the faceplate and looked up at Phil. “Hey, Phil,” he said. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

While he leaned over and threw up onto the pavement, he felt hands on his armor, undoing the emergency release clasps. As the armor came off, other SHIELD agents carried it away into one of their many vans, and once it was completely off and he was done emptying his stomach, they lifted him onto a stretcher and put him into one of the vans as well.

“Hey, hey, I’m totally fine,” he said blearily to Phil as a SHIELD medic hovered around him. “Only had a little bit of cardiac arrest.”

“Be quiet before I decide to skip grounding you and get straight to locking you in your room for the rest of your life,” Phil said. Clint, at some point, had joined them in the van, and pulled Phil over to lean on his shoulder. They barely blinked as they watched over Anton, keeping a close eye as the medic checked him over.

He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have, because when he woke up the van had changed to a SHIELD hospital room and Natasha and Clint were playing cards on the edge of his bed.

“Stark had a press conference today,” Natasha said. “The Iron Man is publicly known as your bodyguard.”

“And no one asked me about this?” he asked.

“You were unconscious. It was decided that you weren’t going to start making good decisions once you woke up and went ahead with the announcement,” she said.

When Anton glanced over at Clint, the man made a noncommittal half shrug. “Yeah, basically,” he said. “But at least they said you could keep doing the whole Iron Man thing. I mean, Phil is totally pissed at them—them being mostly Hill and Fury—but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that keeping you out of the fight is going to take nothing less than us chaining you to your bed. It could be worse, I guess. At least you’ve had training.”

“Iron Man?”

Clint snorted. “That’s the bit you latch onto? Priorities, kid. Yeah, that’s what the media’s been calling you. They all think you’re either a woman or a really, really short guy by the way, so you’re safe there. Apparently even they don’t think we’re crazy enough to let a kid do our dirty work.”

Almost as if he’d been alerted as to what they’d been discussing, Phil slipped into the room. Natasha took one look at the three of them and left the room. That was what he liked about Natasha. She knew when to make herself scarce and when to stick around. If she’d been worried about one of them being so pissed they’d hurt him, she’d have stuck around, so they weren’t too angry at him.

He decided to get right to the point. “You’re pissed.”

Instead of talking or yelling, Phil stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. Anton’s eyes flew open in surprise, and his arms dangled at his sides. When Phil didn’t let go, he hesitantly brought them up and returned Phil’s tight hold on him.

“I take it back,” Phil said. “Gulmira had nothing on this.”

Clint slipped onto the bed as well, and somehow they arranged it so that Clint was on the bottom with Phil half on him and half on the bed and Anton fully draped over him.

“Clint, turn off the TV. I’m trying to sleep,” Phil muttered. Obligingly, Clint turned off the television, leaving them in total silence. Apparently they weren’t going to talk then. If this was what they did instead, Anton was totally fine with that.

***

The Winter Soldier did not care about how long it had been since he had last been awake. He had gone through this process too many times to care anymore. All he cared about now was the next mission. Going by Anton’s absence, he assumed it was another training exercise.

Then they told him that Anton had been taken. And he knew that he would stop at nothing until he had killed every person that dared harm a single hair on his head. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter this time, but the next one will come soon.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He should have known that palladium was poisonous, but there's not much he can do about it right now. He's just a little bit busy keeping the world from ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another brief warning this chapter for brief thought of suicide and threat of suicide towards the end.

Anton pulled up his shirt and looked at the dark lines spreading out from his arc reactor. They’d appeared a week ago, and had been spreading slowly ever since. The length of them varied depending on how long it had been since he’d replaced the palladium in his chest. At the worst times, they reached up his neck. At the best, the shortest line extended three inches beyond the edge of the reactor. He didn’t have the resources to test his blood at the moment, but he knew it wasn’t going anywhere good. If it was palladium poisoning, it wasn’t exactly something to leap for joy over. 

At a knock on the door, he quickly pulled down his shirt. “What?”

Phil opened the door. “Clint and I have been called out on a long-term mission.”

“SHIELD barracks for me, then, huh?”

“Natasha will be there,” Phil said. “So will Steve.”

“They’re always gone though. Watch, I’m going to be stuck with Sitwell the whole time,” Anton said.

Phil shook a finger at him. “Behave, Anton. I expect to find my agents in one piece when I get back. Now get your bags together. We leave in an hour.”

‘We’ did not actually include Phil and Clint, as it turned out. Anton was ushered into a SHIELD car driven by Natasha, and Phil and Clint took another SHIELD car and went their own way.

“SHIELD barracks as boring as I remember?” he asked.

“I’m sure you’ll manage to liven them up,” Natasha said. “Besides, we’re going to the helicarrier, not the ground office.”  

“Is Agent Cardboard there?” he asked.

“Ward? No, mission,” she said.

“Oh, thank God. I think my entire stay there when we first came was made infinitely worse by his presence. The man could deaden up a room just by walking in. If there’s an opposite to an icebreaker, he’s it,” he said.

She glanced at him quickly before turning her eyes to the road. “You’re chatty. Something wrong?”

He shrugged and shook his head. He didn’t need her figuring out the palladium poisoning; Natasha would only go and tell Clint and Phil, and he didn’t need them worrying needlessly. Natasha just made a small noise of understanding. “Worried about Coulson and Barton, then. Don’t. They’re professionals. They’ll be back in a few weeks and you’ll wonder why you even bothered.”

Well, he was in SHIELD anyway, so he might as well make use of their facilities. They had plenty of labs just lying around, ripe for the picking. Anton went ahead and set himself up in one, testing element after element to find a suitable replacement for palladium.

After three weeks, he hadn’t found a single one that was even slightly suitable. He’d settled on just making as many replacement chips as possible, and had amassed quite the stash by the time he was called down to the bridge. They sent Steve to bring him, as Natasha had been sent on some mission where she was supposed to look pretty and helpless while secretly being twice as deadly as anyone in the room.

“Clint and Phil are back?” he asked. Steve didn’t reply, just pushed him along faster.

Phil was the only one there when they walked into the bridge. Fury and Hill were the only ones to meet Anton’s eyes. “Clint’s gone, isn’t he?”

Phil, phone pressed firmly to his face, just nodded. “Widow,” he said. Judging by the tone of the response, he’d interrupted her mission. “Barton’s been compromised. I’m sending you to get the big guy.”

“Coulson,” Fury said sternly. Both of their gazes landed on Anton.

“Anton will be coming with you,” Phil finished before hanging up the phone. To Fury, he said, “I still don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Banner isn’t going to murder a teenager,” Fury said. “Now send him off. We are on a tight schedule, people!”

Phil escorted Anton out to the landing strip. “Loki, Thor’s brother, stole an energy source we’ve been guarding called the Tesseract. He brainwashed Clint and Dr. Selvig and took them with him. We’re getting together the members of an initiative that we’ve been planning.”

“Is it the Avengers Initiative? Which, ah, I know absolutely nothing about because I have in no way been looking at your files,” Anton added hastily.

Phil gave him a distinctly unimpressed look. “I’ll deal with that later. I’m needed up here right now, but Natasha will meet you in India. You do exactly as she says. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“You know, I can’t think of a single time you said that and I actually listened.” Anton gave Phil a cheeky grin.

“Behave,” Phil said before the ramp rose up and the plane took off. Anton was the only one in the plane other than the pilot, but SHIELD planes flew quickly, so he wasn’t alone for long, and he had the mission files to entertain himself with. Natasha was waiting for him in India as if he’d taken an eternity, though, and looked like she’d like to rip the pilot a new one for taking too long.

“Finally. We just sent a girl out to find Banner. She’s going to bring him into that house. He starts turning, you call in backup. You do know who Banner is, right?”

“I’m not stupid, Natasha. I did read the file,” Anton said. “Don’t make the big guy angry. Easy enough.”

The look she gave him plainly showed she thought him capable of making a mushroom furious. He decided to not let that conversation continue and slipped into the house. It had already been prepped by the agents. No people inside, gun under the table. He’d just familiarized himself with it when a little girl ran by him and out the window and a man wandered in after her.

“Should’ve gotten paid up front,” Banner said, looking between the window and Anton.

“Heya, Doc,” Anton said. “SHIELD sent me to collect you. Don’t worry; it’s just you and me. Even the kid that brought you skedaddled.”

“You’re agents, then. She an agent too?” Banner pointed to the window, where the little girl had been.

He didn’t think so, but all he did was shrug and take a seat at the table, letting Banner stand over him from the other side of the table. “I was younger than her when I started.”

“How did SHIELD find me?” he asked.

“Never lost you. They like to keep tabs on people like that,” Anton said. The file had made that clear enough. “They’ve been keeping an eye on things, making sure the military stayed off your backs. Now, they want you to come in. No time for hanging out in India right now. Not that I can understand why you’d want to. It’s hot as Satan’s balls and sweaty as his pits.”

“I’m surprised that they’d send a Russian.” At Anton’s glance of surprise, his smile grew slightly less awkward and nervous. “I placed your accent. I’m, well, also surprised they’d send a teenager.”

“They figured you weren’t going to go all ‘Hulk Smash’ on the equivalent of a twig,” Anton said. “Hence, you get the twig bringing you in.”

“But you—you aren’t any teenager. SHIELD has trained you.” He sounded absolutely confident about that. He was right to.

“I could take a man down six ways from Sunday,” Anton agreed. “So, you coming or not?”

“If I refuse?” Banner asked.

Anton shrugged. Under the table, his hands reached for the gun. “Then I leave you alone and let you go your own way, and they send me after another Gamma radiation expert. We want your science know-how, not you in a cage.”

Banner slammed his hands on the table and screamed, “Stop lying to me!”

For a moment, Anton forgot all about the gun at his fingertips as he jerked away, only remembering Papa and _don’t you know what happens to little boys that lie, Anton? They get their lying little tongues cut out_ as hot coals were dropped into his small hands and he screamed.

Then he remembered, and in an instant he had the gun pointed at Banner, breathing heavily. Banner backed off, holding his hands high.

“I’m sorry, that was mean.” His eyes seemed very sad, and his voice was very gentle and calming. “I just wanted to see what you would do. I’m not going to hit you. So, you can put down the gun, and the Other Guy doesn’t have to come out to play.”

Anton, slowly, put the gun down and pressed the comlink in his ear. “Stand down. We’re good.”

“Standing down,” Natasha reported.

Banner smiled. “Just us, huh?”

“Well, what can I say? Even SHIELD isn’t crazy enough to send a kid up against the Hulk,” Anton said.

The SHIELD agents still seemed wary when he led Banner outside. Natasha gave Anton a quick once-over and then said sharply, “This way, Dr. Banner.”

“Don’t mind her,” Anton said. “Adults get pissy when they’re worried.”

“I’ll Coulson you almost got killed and we’ll see how much you’re laughing then,” she called over her shoulder as she slipped into a jet. Anton amused himself for the flight by pulling faces when she wasn’t looking and trying to make Banner look like he wasn’t headed to his execution.

The helicarrier was in the water when they arrived, but the look on Banner’s face when it flew up made Anton want to burst out laughing. “Come on, big guy,” he said. “Lemme show you the lab. We’ve got all the toys.”

“Do you have the Commodore 64?”

At that, Anton really did laugh. “Commodore 64? That’s a good one, Doc. I think you and I are going to get along fine.”

“I’m surprised you got that one. You’re very young,” Banner said.

As they passed through the bridge, Anton quickly caught Phil’s eyes and only received a shake of the head. No sign of Clint then. He decided not to stick around and headed straight back to the lab he’d claimed as his. “I’m young, not stupid. I know my technology.” Not to mention that once he’d worked on a Commodore 64 when the Red Room had acquired one. He’d only been able to use it a couple times before he woke up and it had been replaced with a newer model.

“We’ve got better than the Commodore in here,” he said, waving his hand around the wave. “Howard has a deal with SHIELD, so it’s all Stark tech, from the computers to those fiddly medical bits over there. Speaking of which, do you do blood tests?”

“I can,” Banner said hesitantly.

Anton grinned and held out an arm. “Awesome. Test me.”

“For what?” he asked, still wary.

Anton shrugged. “Anything and everything. I mean, we’ve got time to kill.”

“Is there something in particular you’re worried about?”

“Let’s just call it a hunch. You can call it payback for that little stunt you pulled in India,” Anton said.

Banner nodded and carefully got to work, taking a moment to set up the equipment in the back of the lab and then sterilizing a spot in the crook of Anton’s arm and inserting a needle and drawing a vial of blood. SHIELD had excellent machines, at least, and he only needed to get it started before the tests started running.

Anton clapped his hands together. “Well, now that we’ve sorted that out, we’re supposed to be looking for the Tesseract. Here, take a look.” He pulled up the file on the computer closest to him and slid it over to the one closest to Banner, who read through it carefully.

“All right,” he said. “I can work with this.”

Working with Banner was very different from working with Howard. Howard tended to be noisy and half the time he was at least a little bit drunk, sometimes he seemed to forget that Anton was there entirely, and he absolutely hated explaining things to people who didn’t understand what he was talking about. Banner was quiet, unobtrusive, and easy to forget about but for the fact that he was absolutely brilliant, both at doing things and explaining them. By the time the test results came in, Banner had become Bruce and Anton was sitting next to him, staring intensely at the screen as Bruce quietly talked about what he was doing.

“Work on that, I’ll get the results,” Bruce said. Anton nodded and took over, only paying a sliver of his attention to the rustling behind him.

“Well, that’s not good,” Bruce said at last.

Papers appeared in front of his face. Anton grabbed them and scanned over them quickly, only pausing at the particularly interesting bits. “It’s about what I expected,” he said, folding them up and cramming them in his pocket. He’d check over them again, later, when Bruce wasn’t hanging over his shoulder. He had a feeling it would be to keep the results of all those tests to himself.

“Palladium poisoning. How’d you manage that one?” Bruce asked. Silently, Anton pulled up his shirt. “That’s, yeah, that’s really not good.”

Anton lowered his shirt again. “Yeah, well, you know what they say. Без муки нет науки.”

“What’s that one mean?” Bruce asked.

“Without torture, no science!” Anton declared. Bruce chuckled and went back to the calculations running on the screen. He was actually having fun, despite the palladium issues—and then Loki showed up and it all went to hell.

The calculations just had to run on their own, so Anton had been going through Coulson’s files, figuring out what exactly SHIELD planned to do in the energy business. Steve came in and yelled at him for being immature and slacking off, so Anton decided to throw the issue his way. Steve hated it when government organizations got too powerful. That got rid of him quickly enough, but when he returned he might as well have brought half the helicarrier with him.

Fury showed up to demand progress, then Steve showed up to yell at Fury for using the Tesseract to create weapons, and then Natasha came in to yell at Bruce for being there, which, really? They were the ones to bring him in. At some point Thor came in to laugh at them all and everybody yelled at him.

Anton wasn’t even sure what they were fighting over anymore, just that he and Natasha were screaming at each other in Russian and Steve and Fury were yelling at each other in English and everybody was yelling at Thor and Bruce was yelling at everybody.

Then, everybody stopped yelling.

Yeah, Anton had maybe-kinda-sorta flipped Natasha over his back and through the window.

Oops.

“At least I didn’t stab her?” he offered, and then everybody was yelling at him for _fucking throwing the Black Widow through a fucking window_ , as Fury so aptly put it.  Then Bruce got pissed at all of them for screaming at Anton, and an angry Banner wasn’t something any of them wanted, especially not when he was holding tight to Loki’s scepter.

Anton was prepared for things to go to shit right then and there, as it did. Just not exactly the way he’d expected. The Tesseract locator pinged and he glanced over at it and, hold up, wasn’t that where the helicarrier was?

Then the helicarrier exploded and he flew forward, almost stabbing himself on that stupid-looking scepter. Fury hauled him to his feet and practically threw him out the door. “Get Iron Man, Romanov!”

Right, Iron Man. He’d installed a spare suit in the helicarrier when they’d given him permission to stick around with SHIELD, and he ran there now, hoping no one would stop him on his way. In the distance, he could hear the Hulk roaring in rage and ran even faster. Probably not good with palladium pumping through his veins, but whatever. He’d deal with that later.

First things first. Get the suit, help Steve fix the broken engine, don’t get sliced into a million pieces in the engine, save Steve’s life from Loki’s goons. Piece of cake. Only not really, because Hulk was rampaging all over the helicarrier and apparently Clint was the one leading the attack.

By the end of it all, the dark lines had spread up to Anton’s neck, Clint was better thanks to ‘cognitive recalibration,’ also known as Natasha hitting him really hard on the head, and Thor and Bruce had been thrown . . . somewhere.

And Phil.

“Phil’s dead?” Anton reached out and touched one of the Captain America cards on the desk. Steve had signed them a couple years ago, but his signature was still plain to see despite the blood. Fury said nothing.

And Anton knew that he would do whatever it took to take Loki down.

He stormed away to where the cage meant for the Hulk had been and sat down, dangling his legs into the abyss below. Steve sat behind him. “I’m sorry about Phil. I know he was important to you.”

“He was an idiot,” Anton said, scrubbing at his eyes furiously. “You don’t go into a fight you don’t know you’re going to win.”

“He was doing his job,” Steve said.

“Well, he shouldn’t have,” Anton said. “He should have let someone else go, or taken someone with him, or something.”

“There’s not always a way out,” Steve said.

There was always a way out. He’d thought there wasn’t a way out of Siberia, and he’d gotten out. He’d thought there wasn’t a way out of the Red Room, and he and Natasha had gotten out. He knew there had to be a way out of the palladium poisoning, too.

“Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?” Steve asked.

Anton shook his head. “By the time I was seven I’d killed ten people,” he said dully.

“It doesn’t get easier,” Steve said. “But right now, we need to put it aside and get ourselves together. We need to figure out where Loki would go.”

“I dunno,” Anton said. “What does he need? A power source. What does he want? Well, himself up on a pedestal, for one thing. That one’s a primadonna if there ever was one. He wants flowers, he wants a parade, he wants his name up in shining lights for the world to see!”

And who was it with one of the tallest buildings in New York? Who was it with their insignia on almost every piece of technology in SHIELD? Who was it that was on every major news channel at least once a week?

“Shit.” He stumbled to his feet and took off running. “Stark Tower.”

“What?”

“It’s powered by an arc reactor!” he yelled over his shoulder. “I’m getting Iron Man, you get whoever’s left.”

The Iron Man armor was trashed, but he did have another model at Stark Tower. “JARVIS, finish the armor. I’m gonna need it sooner rather than later.”

“Of course, sir. Right away.”

He didn’t bother with the doors, just crashed right through the window. “Sorry, Howard!” he yelled.

“Fuck!” the man yelped, shoving himself away from his desk and tipping over backwards. The bots whirred in alarm and spun in circles as if searching for an unseen attacker. “Shit! What the hell are you doing, kid?”

“Something stupid!”

The armor was barely complete, but it wrapped around him smoothly enough. “Right, okay, that works, now off. We’re going to go straight up to ultimate stupid, and JARVIS, you’re going to take the armor and hide out under the penthouse balcony. Sorry, Howard, but supervillains are taking over your house and I need to borrow it.”

He didn’t stick around to let Howard protest, but ran out the door and into the elevator once he’d gotten what he’d needed. As he’d thought, Loki was standing on the balcony looking over the machine.

“Yeah, I have no idea what I’m doing,” he muttered to himself before prepping the basic grenade he’d picked up from Howard’s workshop and lobbing it at the machine. It exploded, blasting Loki and his minion back, but leaving the machine itself completely unharmed, and a few moments later Loki stood as well and stormed towards Anton.

Yeah, he was screwed. Destroying his portal machine hadn’t worked, time to save his skin and make sure Loki didn’t end up wearing him as a coat.

“Your world must be truly desperate, if this is what they send out to face me. A mere child.” At least he seemed more amused and scornful than actually angry. “How . . . sweet.”

Time to throw everything out the window. Sanity most of all. “Eat dicks,” Anton said before bringing his knee up and slamming it into Loki’s groin. The trick seemed to work just as well against Norse gods as it did mortal men; Loki bent double, hissing under his breath, and when he looked up his eyes were as angry as the Hulk’s.

“Oh, you’ll pay for that one, boy,” he said.

“Yeah, I think that’s gonna be you, actually,” Anton said. “I mean, you basically managed to piss off every single one of the Avengers.”

“Who?”

“That’s what they call themselves. You might have run into them briefly. You know, the super soldier that more than lives up to the title, the guy in a suit of armor that _flies_ , two wicked cool assassins, your brother the alien god, and a big guy that’s basically made of rage. And you’ve managed to piss off every single one of them. Trust me, there’s no faster way to get people together than to give them a common enemy,” Anton said.

“Your heroes have been scattered, child,” Loki scoffed.

“Well, that’s what you think. You might be thinking a bit differently when they come up here and start kicking your ass,” Anton said.

“I’d like to see that, especially when they’re so torn up over fighting you.” Loki reached out with the scepter, which glowed brighter and brighter as it neared Anton’s chest.

Clink.

Nothing.

Loki frowned at the scepter and tapped it to Anton’s chest again, with no results. “Funny, that usually works.”

“Eh, well, performance issues.”

Quickest way to piss a guy off: make fun of his dick. Loki’s face twisted in rage and he lifted Anton up by the throat and threw him out the window. The armor, waiting underneath the balcony, folded itself around Anton and safely kept him from becoming bug splat on the ground. He took a moment to catch his breath—he had a feeling the palladium poisoning was worsening—and stared up at the sky as a beam shot up from Loki’s machine and opened a portal.

Aliens. They were fighting aliens. When had his life become a movie? They flew down in endless waves, with the Avengers fighting them down below. It was just Anton, Steve, Natasha, and Clint at first, but Bruce joined them as the Hulk and Thor flew in as well. When he thought about it, it was a bit like playing Galaga, only not as fun.

Six of them, thousands of aliens.

Easy-peasy, right? Yeah, he wished. Evidently the World Council didn’t think they were going to have much luck, either, seeing as they decided to send a nuke in. Anton did a quick headcount. Thor, who was busy with his brother and probably didn’t even know what a nuke was. The rest of them, who couldn’t fly. Guess it was up to him. Hell, he was dying anyways, what did it even matter?

He flew the nuke up to the portal and watched it explode, and as everything faded black he thought that, hey, at least he’d beaten Galaga.

Moments later he opened his eyes again at the sound of the Hulk’s roar and realized that at some point his faceplate had been pulled off. The rest of the Avengers were staring down at him in shock, but Clint was hovering over him anxiously. Anton smiled at him, ignoring the flashing cameras behind them. “You should have seen the stars,” he mumbled, letting his eyes slip closed. “Fucking amazing.” Terrifying as hell, but amazing.

Someone was yelling to get him out of the suit. JARVIS seemed to hear as well, as it unfolded around him and they pulled him out and put him on a stretcher.

“What’s up with his neck?” Clint asked. His shirt was pulled up and over his head, revealing the arc reactor and the lines spreading out from it. “That’s . . . not good, I’m guessing.”

“We need to finish this and get Loki,” Steve said. He looked angry, probably because guess what, one of the guys on his team was fourteen years old. Shocker!

“I’m—I’ll stay with him. Give Loki a sock on the jaw from me,” Clint said. “Find Stark and tell him to get to SHIELD. Tell him it’s Anton.”

He faded in and out during the ride to SHIELD, and was barely able to focus at all when they stuck him full of IVs and fitted him with an oxygen mask. SHIELD doctors were drawing blood and rushing around. He tried to find the words to tell them what was wrong, but none made it up his throat. His hand closed around the test results still in his pocket, but no, those were his. There was something no one could know or they’d take him away . . . if only he could remember what it was. His brain felt like it was full of cotton balls.

“It’s palladium poisoning,” someone else—Howard—said. “Dammit! It’s toxic, we should have realized this . . . we need a replacement.”

Clint didn’t move an inch from Anton’s bedside. He kept his eyes focused on Anton as if at any moment he was liable to go into cardiac arrest. Between closing his eyes and opening them again, Howard came in and replaced with palladium in his chest with a fresh piece, and that made him feel a bit better, at least.

It was enough that he managed to mumble, “Sorry. I seem to keep ending up here.”

Clint brushed his sweaty bangs out of his face. “Go back to sleep.”

He didn’t want to sleep. When he slept, that was when he went back to Russia. Sometimes it was the Red Room, and sometimes it was Anton Vanko’s workshop in Siberia. He didn’t want to, but his eyes slipped closed anyways.

He woke up screaming.

That was the way it was. He slept and he dreamed and he screamed, and the doctors and Howard Stark got nowhere at all.

“The element doesn’t exist!” he heard Howard screaming. “There is no element that will help him—not even any combinations of elements!”

“If you let him die from this, I will never rest until you have paid in full,” Clint said. He sounded calm, but he spent more and more time looking exhausted and tired. Sometimes, Anton considered just turning off all the machines hooked up to him to get it over with faster, but every time he thought of it he remembered that Phil was dead, and if he died Clint wouldn’t have either of them. He distracted himself by turning on the television and listening to people talk about the Battle of New York, as they were calling it. He was pretty sure he’d be joining the rest of SHIELD in dealing with the fall-out of having his faceplate yanked off in the sight of cameras and the resulting revelation that he was Iron Man if he wasn’t in the hospital. He’d rather be dealing with the media.

Over time, the room even began to look a bit lived in. Clint, Howard, or Natasha was always in the room at some point, when they weren’t busy doing interviews and getting good press for the Avengers. Turned out that having a teenager on your team tended to piss people off. Steve was out there most of all, making use of his all-American charm to win the public over, but even he visited, although he looked a bit bemused at the posters and toys Clint had brought from home to make the place look more cheerful.

“You and Phil both, huh?” he said.

“You should show me your shield,” Anton said. “I’m a big fan of the shield.”

“And there we have it. I knew there had to be an ulterior motive behind our friendship,” Steve said. It seemed he carried his shield with him everywhere, because he set it on top of Anton. Anton grinned and slipped his arm into one of the straps and ran his other hand over the surface.

“Yep, I only love you for your shield. I mean, come on, it’s made of vibranium,” he said.

Howard looked up from the corner where he had been scribbling in a notebook, an eerie gleam to his eyes. “Vibranium. God, I’m an idiot.” His chair clattered as he rushed from the room without another word. Steve followed hot on his heels, calling his name.

None of them noticed the window open, but a cold breeze brushed Anton’s face, and he shivered and pulled the blankets up around him.

“Sorry,” a man said.

Long hair. Metal arm.

“Yakov?”

The man turned and Anton couldn’t help but grin. “I knew it was you.”

Yakov was at his side in a few steps. “Anton,” he said. “What have they done to you?”

Anton shut his eyes and fiddled with the needles in his wrist. “They’re not hurting me.”

“You’re sick. You look like you’re about to keel over any moment now. Tell me again that they aren’t hurting you here,” the Yakov said. “I’m here to take you back to the Red Room, where you are safe.”

“People in the Red Room die every day. How am I any different?” he asked.

“My mission is to ensure your survival,” he said.

“I’m not leaving,” he said. “You’ll have to drag me out if you plan on taking me with you.”

“Fine by me.” Yakov pulled the needles from Anton’s wrist and hauled him up from the bed and slung him over his shoulder. The window was on the second story, but he jumped out as if it were no more than a single step on a staircase. Anton couldn’t hear anything from where he was, but he recognized the click of a gun.

“Put him down, Yakov,” Natasha ordered. “Don’t make me do this.”

“Natalia,” Yakov said. “I hadn’t thought you would turn traitor.”

“What can I say? Job selection in America is better.”

The Winter Soldier dropped Anton and shoved him behind him as Natasha launched herself at him. They both disarmed each other of their guns quickly, and were left grappling with each other and occasionally going in for a stab. Anton would have helped, but when he stumbled forward he felt dizzy and breathless, and Natasha warned him off with her signature glare. She was determined and strong, Anton knew how it would end. They’d all been trained by the Winter Soldier; he knew their fighting styles. They had only spent a couple years away from his training, after all. And this was definitely the Winter Soldier—ruthless, emotionless, and uncaring of anything but the primary objective, no matter who he had to crush.

When the Winter Soldier threw Natasha against a building, it wasn’t a surprise, but the shield that stopped him from finishing the job was. The Winter Soldier reached out and grabbed the shield with his metal arm and stared directly into the eyes of Captain America.

The Winter Soldier tossed the shield aside and ran knife-first at Steve, who blocked and parried but never made an actual attack of his own. Occasionally, he could hear Steve yelling, “Bucky, it’s me! Snap out of it!” He’d never considered that Yakov could have been someone before he’d been the Winter Soldier. He squinted, trying to see the resemblance between Yakov and the man named Bucky from the comics. He couldn’t really see it, but then again everything was kind of fuzzy. His headache wasn’t helping things either.

Hands gripped his arms and pulled him away from the fight. “Hang on,” Howard said, shoving an arc reactor into Anton’s clammy hands. “This hasn’t been tested, but I’m pretty sure it’ll work. It won’t make you any worse, at least.” He twisted Anton’s arc reactor and pulled it out of his chest. Anton glanced over and saw Yakov—not the Winter Soldier, the Winter Soldier could never look so protective and furious on someone else’s behalf—staring at the hole in his chest as Howard pulled away, old arc reactor in hand. Anton scrambled to put the new one in and step in, but even as it clicked into position, Yakov threw Steve into a wall, picked up his gun, and shot Howard in the head.

It had been a long time since Anton had been splattered with brain. He hadn’t missed it.

Dimly, he noted that his mouth tasted like coconuts.

His expression didn’t change in the slightest as he lifted up his shirt and wiped the gunk off his face. The lines on his chest had receded completely. Natasha’s gun was lying on the ground a few feet away. He stepped over and picked it up, feeling its weight in his hand.

“You know what my papa always told me?” he asked as he pointed the gun at the Winter Soldier. “He said, ‘Do you know what happens to bad little boys, Anton? They get put down.’ Well, I don’t think that’ll work very well for you.” He turned the gun and pointed it as his own head. “Put down your weapons and surrender or I’ll blow my brains out.”

Yakov looked at him and, very slowly, put down his weapons and put his hands in the air. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never written the Winter Soldier before. We'll see how it turned out.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One problem solved, another one discovered. Apparently life just couldn't give him a break.

“How did you know that would work?” Steve asked as they stared through the tinted glass at the Hulk’s cage. Although it apparently wasn’t too good at holding alien gods, it worked just fine with Russian assassins. Once Anton had persuaded the Winter Soldier to put down his weapons, it had been a lot easier to take him in. Clint had been ready to kill him for holding the gun up to his head while they brought in the Winter Soldier, but that was nothing new. It had solved the problem, so as far as Anton was concerned, nothing else really mattered.

“Simple. His primary objective is to keep me alive. The secondary goal was to get me back to Russia. He’ll start planning that one again now, so you’d better get cracking on that cognitive recalibration,” Anton said.

“I’m surprised you’re so calm,” Steve said. “After Howard . . .”

“Trust me,” Anton said. “Once your best friend tortures you continuously until it doesn’t affect you anymore, you’re not fazed by violence much. When you’re seven years old it takes a lot of time to stop yielding every time someone yanks your fingernails out.”

Steve winced. “Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen worse than that,” Anton said.

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“Of course it does.” It had bothered him when Howard had been killed, just like it had bothered him in the Red Room when friend after friend was killed in a training mission, more often than not at the hands of the Winter Soldier. Anton was no stranger to death. It wasn’t the first time that one of his friends killed another friend while trying to protect him. He just didn’t see the use in wallowing; better to go with something more productive. He wouldn’t get anything done by curling up into a ball and sobbing his eyes out, so he would push any negative feelings on the subject aside and keep moving until he couldn’t anymore. 

“Can I talk to Yakov?” he asked. Yakov was all alone in the cage at the moment, although he wouldn’t be for long. Once SHIELD figured out exactly what they were going to do with him, they were going to begin undoing the Red Room’s programming. He didn’t know how long that would take, but he placed his bets on a long, long time. Months, probably, and after that he wouldn’t even be the same person.

“Probably not a good idea,” Steve said.

“Your mouth says one thing, but your face says you want to go down there and talk to him just as much as I do. Come on,” Anton wheedled. “Just for a bit?”

For a moment, Steve even seemed to be considering it, but then he shook his head. “Too dangerous. You’re his primary target right now. And it’s probably better not to have Captain America hanging around the Soviet assassin. We don’t know what they told him about me, but it’s probably not anything good.”

“It’s not like he can do anything to us from in there,” Anton pointed out.

Before Steve could protest again, Clint knocked on the door. “Anton, Mrs. Stark wants to see you. I’m taking you to her office.” With one last glance back at Yakov, Anton left Steve to watch over as Natasha approached the glass cage and began to speak. He squinted, trying to read her lips, but the door swung shut behind him and he had no choice but to follow Clint.

Clint drove Lola now that Phil wasn’t around. It was strange to always be driven around in it by someone other than Phil when before Phil had only grudgingly let Clint drive his precious car. Walking into Howard’s office was also strange. Instead of her husband, Maria Stark sat behind the desk, looking at a picture with red-rimmed and watery eyes. It was a family portrait, he noted, of Maria sitting with her young son on her lap and her husband at her side.

“I’ve taken over the company for now,” Maria said. “Since Howard said you were to take over the company, but you’re too young at the moment. But that’s not what I have to talk about. Howard’s nephew is trying to take over the company. The board is eager to keep the company in the Stark family, even if Morgan is infamously irresponsible. He’s demanding a paternity test, as well, supposedly on the basis of making sure you aren’t linked with any rival companies. Anton, what do you know about your father?”

Again, he thought of the blood test back in his room. Banner really had tested everything, but he decided not to say. That was something he’d prefer to keep to himself. “Not a whole lot.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she sighed. “Well, I suppose we’ll find out when it gets to court.”

“Wait. Court?” He really hoped he hadn’t heard that right.

“Yes, he’s suing for control of the company,” she said. “Didn’t I say that?”

“So I’m being ordered by the court to cough up some DNA samples? Fun,” he said. Great. Well, at least he knew Morgan wouldn’t be pleased with the results. Chances were once he saw them, he wouldn’t even mention the test.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “All you have to do is show up.”

Of course that meant that when they were called into court later that month, he got put on the stand practically the moment they walked in. Maria shrugged helplessly when he glared at her. At least he’d worn a nice suit.

Morgan Stark’s lawyer strolled up to the stand. “State your name, age, and occupation for the court.”

“Anton Romanov. Fifteen. High school student.”

“And you moved here from Russia two years ago, correct?”

“Yes.” Oh, God, this was all going to be horribly pointless questions. He could tell.

“Where exactly in Russia?”

“Siberia.” Yep, he was right.

“Where in Siberia?”

Okay, really? “I don’t know.”

The lawyer looked at him intensely. “You don’t know.”

“Uh, yeah. I didn’t really have a pressing need to know exactly what random town I lived in. It’s not like I ever went anywhere or mailed any letters.” If they kept going on like this, he was going to jump off the stand and make a break for it.

“At any rate,” the lawyer said, clearing his throat. “Upon looking into the records, we discovered that there was no student named Anton Romanov in Siberia that is the same age as Mr. Romanov here. Care to explain?”

He shrugged. “I never went to school. I taught myself everything.”

“And no one alerted the authorities that you weren’t going to school?” the lawyer asked. “What did you do instead?”

“It might have something to do with the fact that we were all, you know, dirt poor and starving. Not that that’s a big deal or anything,” Anton said. “I worked. Everybody worked.”

“Where did you work?”

Jesus, it was just a never-ending stream of tedious questions. He decided to try imagining that the lawyer was a praying mantis. Mrs. Stark’s lawyer, Ms. Walters, could be the female praying mantis that ate him after sex. “I worked in Anton Vanko’s workshop.” And had the scars to prove it. Most of them had faded, but when he looked at his hands, he could still see the scars from the hot coals that Vanko had put in his hands whenever he was particularly angry. Anton Vanko had not been a kind boss, and he’d been an even worse father. At least now Anton knew they weren’t related, even if he wasn’t going to broadcast that fact.

“This would be the same Anton Vanko that was deported during the Cold War for espionage, correct?”

“If you mean the Anton Vanko that helped develop the arc reactor with Howard Stark, then yeah, that’s who I’m talking about.” Just think about praying mantises. Female praying mantises eating the heads of the males after sex. Or a spider. A female spider eating the male after sex. Wow, bugs were kinda creepy now that he thought of it. That explained Natasha.

“His son, Ivan Vanko recently attacked the Stark Expo, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Anton said. Obviously. A bit hard to miss that one.

“Were you familiar with Ivan Vanko?”

Yikes, talk about a loaded question. “In a manner of speaking,” Anton said. “We didn’t get on.”

“Can you describe your relationship with the Vankos?”

“We didn’t get on,” Anton repeated.

“Provide us with an example,” the lawyer said.

“Think Cinderella, only with only one evil sibling and no Prince Charming,” Anton said snidely.

Well, no one knew quite what to say to that other than telling him off for not taking it seriously enough, so the lawyer cleared his throat and moved on. “At the age of thirteen, your aunt Natasha Romanov took a job with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, also known as SHIELD, correct?”

“Yep.” Great, more rehashing his life.

“We went to Ivan Vanko’s workshop,” the lawyer said. “His neighbors informed us that they did indeed remember Vanko having two boys living with him, although they said the younger one vanished when he was around six or seven years old.” For a moment, he looked rather disgruntled. “They were unable to say exactly what year they recalled the boys living there. I have a recording of the conversation, in Russian, to present.”

They called in a translator, who sat near the recorder and repeated its every word. “Anton Vanko’s boys . . . yes, I remember the boys. There was the big one, Vanya, and the little one, Antoshka. Ivan and Anton, I mean. Vanya I never spoke with too much—he was a disrespectful little thing—but Antoshka was always begging for food. I do recall feeling sorry for the poor dear. Once I opened my door and found him almost frozen outside. I haven’t seen him in years. He disappeared when he was around six or seven years old, I believe. If you ask me, Anton Vanko finally got so fed up he offed the boy and tossed his corpse in the river. Poor dear. His papa was never kind to him. When? Oh, I don’t recall . . . I don’t have much of a head for those kinds of things at all.”

Wow, he was surprised the old woman even remembered him at all. She’d always been a bit senile. “And what was the point of that supposed to be?”

“You vanished from your hometown, never to be seen again, at the age of six. At the age of thirteen, you moved to the United States from Russia. There is no documentation of you ever leaving Russia or entering the United States, which does raise questions. That, however, can be explained if one assumes that SHIELD brought you into the United States. What I’m wondering is what happened during those seven missing years.”

Talk about things he should’ve mentioned to his lawyer. She looked ready to throttle him. Or eat his head off after having crazy praying-mantis-spider-sex. Hey, if he was going out, he was going out with a bang. Saying ‘I was trained as a Russian spy’ really wasn’t going to gain him any points here, but neither was staying silent. He was half tempted to just say, “Anton Vanko buried me and dumped me in a river and then Natasha used necromancy to bring me back to life,” but that wasn’t about to do anything for him either.

“I was kidnapped,” he said.

“Why? Anton Vanko was not rich, powerful, or particularly talented. He was exiled when he was unable to build the arc reactor without Howard Stark’s help. Why kidnap his younger son—who, according to the paternal test we had done, wasn’t even blood-related to Anton Vanko?”

Anton said nothing, but his lawyer, Ms. Walters, spoke up. “Show us the paternal test. You obviously had it done. I want to see what it says.”

“Objection, your Honor. That has nothing to do with this,” Morgan’s lawyer insisted.

“Overruled. Produce the document,” the judge said.

Scowling, the lawyer slipped a piece of paper over to Ms. Walters. She read over it once, then twice, eyebrows rising higher the longer she looked it over. “His father is Howard Stark,” she said. “Well, there you have it. Rich, powerful, and talented. Weren’t those your requirements for being a candidate for kidnapping?”

“You said paternal test, correct?” Maria Stark said. She looked pale. Anton wondered if he looked the same. “Does it include a maternity test?”

“That’s the strange part,” Ms. Walters said. “You’re listed as the mother.”

The paper was passed around the court. Even Anton took a look, although he had a paper that said the exact same thing back in his room. Mother: Maria Stark, Father: Howard Stark. With that, it was hard for Morgan to make demands, and the court ruled in Anton’s favor, but it really raised more questions than it asked for most people, seeing as the majority of the general public wasn’t aware of the Red Room’s tendency to freeze people. Maria Stark rushed from the courthouse immediately, pale and trembling, leaving him to make his own way home. That was all right. At least now he didn’t have to actually talk to her about it.

It had been too soon for the news to escape, so he left the courthouse before it could. Clint was nowhere to be found, although he’d said he’d show up. Lola was in the garage at home, so Anton expected to find him inside.

“Clint?” he asked, opening the door and nudging Lucky aside when the dog ran up in the hopes of being petted. “Hey, I’m home. The trial’s done.”

The house was cold and absolutely silent. He held his breath as he slunk through the housing, keeping a hand on Lucky’s back. He felt almost as if he had walked into a library, that the slightest word would bring books falling down on his head.

From the back of the house, he heard choked, anguished sobs. Anton followed them to Clint and Phil’s bedroom and paused, hand hovering above the doorknob, before pushing it open. “Clint? I’m home,” he said.

Clint looked up from where his face had been buried in Phil’s pillow. His eyes were red, and his cheeks were damp. “Shit. It’s over? Hang on, I’ll be right out.” He closed the door firmly and locked it. Anton retreated back to his bedroom and shut the door, leaving Lucky outside. When Clint knocked, he rolled over and pretended to be asleep.

He didn’t feel like talking anymore.

***

“Earlier this week, Morgan Stark attempted to take control of Stark Industries from interim CEO Maria Stark and future CEO Anton Romanov, who was also revealed to be the true face behind Iron Man’s mask during the battle of New York. A case that should have been cut-and-dried turned out to have an interesting twist as it was revealed that Anton Romanov’s biological parents are none other than Maria and Howard Stark. Maria Stark has refused to comment on the situation, but sources have confirmed that Maria Stark has not had a child since her son Anthony Stark, who disappeared in 1973, never to be seen again. It is currently under debate whether the test was false, the Starks had a secret son that was hidden away for his own protection, or human cloning has reached new heights.”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

The couch dipped slightly under Clint’s weight as he sat next to Anton on the couch. Lucky barked loudly in greeting, and Clint obligingly joined Anton in petting him. “Have you seen this?” Anton waved a hand at the television wildly. “TV is trash. They think I’m either a clone or a secret child. God, I think I’m in a soap-opera. Or that Disney movie Phil liked. ‘I’m the long-lost princess!’ Only, you know, a dude.”

“A male princess is a prince,” Clint said.

“I know that. Princess and princes and prince and princesses are all stupid words though. Oh, yeah, let’s just keep adding the letter s. Makes perfect sense,” he scoffed.

“I’m with you there. English sucks,” Clint said.

“That’s why we speak Russian at home.” He wondered if now that they knew his biological parents they were going to make him leave again. He hoped not. He didn’t think Maria Stark spoke Russian. She hadn’t talk to him since the news came out, though, so he thought not. Thankfully, she seemed more ready to avoid him than celebrate having a son. He was already someone’s kid, thank-you-very much, and he wasn’t about to leave them because some people he knew had turned out to be his biological parents. Really, he’d just like to forget about it as soon as possible and get back to his regularly scheduled programming. Unfortunately,  the  media seemed determined to keep it at the front of people's minds for as long as possible.

Clint had only said, “A Stark, huh? Well, at least now we know where you got your brains from.”

Anton had replied, “I’m still a Romanov,” and Clint had never brought it up again, so at least there was that. 

Anton looked up as Lucky began to whine loudly. He reached for the remote, but without him doing anything the screen turned from the news to static, and then switched again to colored bars covered by a circle made of ten rings with two crossed swords in the middle.

“Hello. I am the Mandarin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, there was actually a point to killing off Howard. (Sorry about that, by the way . . . I'd somehow managed to forget I'd done it.)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything was going fine. Okay, so Anton was avoiding his therapist and Mrs. Stark was avoiding him, but still, fine. And then it wasn't.

“Morning, Mrs. Arbogast,” Anton called. “Mrs. Stark in?”

“Meeting with the Maria Stark Foundation until four,” the receptionist reported.

“Great. So, do me a favor and don’t tell her I’m here? And let me up to the workshop while you’re at it?” He looked at her through playfully lowered lashes.

“You’re scheduled for an appointment with your therapist in ten minutes,” Mrs. Arbogast said.

He grimaced. “I’m skipping. So sue me. I've been skipping for the past six weeks and Clint hasn’t figured out where I’m going yet, but Mrs. Stark records all my hours here.” She still barely spoke to him, but somehow she managed to keep track of exactly what he was doing. He had to admire her for avoiding him since the trial, though. Six weeks was a long time, especially when they worked at the same place. 

“You might want to look out, then,” she said, motioning behind him with a pen. Anton whirled around to see Lola pulling up to the curb with Clint in the driver’s seat.

“Aw, shit. Don’t tell him I’m here.” He ducked into the nearest office, dove out of sight, and rolled under the desk.

“Anton?” That would be Pepper, in a meeting, probably with someone important, and he’d just ninja-rolled under her desk. Awesome.

Clint approached the doors. “Shh,” Anton whispered. “You never saw me.”  

“Hey, Pep. You seen my kid anywhere?” Clint asked.

“No, can’t say I have,” Pepper said. Anton had to admire her poker face. “I’ve been in a meeting.”

“Oh, right. Sorry to bother you.” Anton watched Clint’s shoes vacate the room and move out of the line of sight before popping up his head.

He grinned at the bemused red-head. “Thanks, Pepper. You’re a doll. You’re definitely still hired when I take over.”

“You must be Mr. Romanov then,” the man with her said. “Aldrich Killian. Advanced Idea Mechanics.”

“He was just leaving,” Pepper added. Judging by the look on Killian’s face, he hadn’t been, but he left all the same. The windows rattled as he slammed the door behind him.

Anton hopped up on the desk and began swinging his legs back and forth. “So, what was that all about?”

“I knew him a few years back. I think he was hoping I might put in a good word for him. I vet all Mrs. Stark’s appointments right now, you see. She’s very busy now that she’s running the company and her charity, and half the people trying to get meetings are just reporters hoping for an interview on the truth of your relationship,” she explained. “His idea is . . . brilliant, to put it simply, but it’s too easily weaponized. Stark Industries has been moving away from weapons since the attack in Afghanistan.”

“Really?” he asked. Maybe he should pay more attention to the business side of things . . . eventually.

“It was Mr. Stark’s business plan. We’ve been slowly decreasing our military contracts. Right now, we help design rescue helicopters and the like for organizations such as the military and SHIELD. We’ve been increasing our involvement in the commercial market with the Starkphone—the one you helped design—and Stark computers. We have several deals to provide them to schools in a joint effort with the Maria Stark Foundation. Mr. Stark was nothing if not a businessman,” she finished.

“Huh.” Idly, he poked at the phone in his pocket, equipped with a small version of JARVIS to be as helpful as possible. He had the wonderful ability to block phone numbers belonging to telephone writers hoping to bother Anton about being Iron Man or the Stark’s biological son without Anton needing to do anything. He’d created the phone mostly for himself, but had left the blueprints out for anyone to see. “I didn’t know they’d put those out on the market.”

“Oh, the board loves them,” she said. “They’re more durable than iPhones and that AI of yours is much better than Siri. They’re a bit expensive at the moment, but we’ll see how that goes. Most of the employees here have one.”

“Well, at least they like my designs even if they don’t like me. I’m heading up to the workshop before Mrs. Stark comes back from her meeting. Don’t tell anyone I’m here!” He slipped out of the office as unobtrusively as possible—Clint was still looking around outside, although he seemed more focused on a rather shabbily dressed man who had been sitting in the lobby for some time—and scurried into the elevator before anyone could notice him. He held the button down so it went straight to the workshop without stopping. He’d rather avoid being noticed as much as possible.

“J, you up?” he called.

The lights in the workshop turned up. “For you, sir? Always.”

“You flatter me,” he said. “Come on, we’ve got work to do. The whole day uninterrupted. Let’s get some music!”

The music was so loud he couldn’t have heard someone enter if they walked in the room, but that was the way he liked it. He hummed along as he worked, sometimes joining in with the chorus when he knew the words. He had to give it to Americans—they sure made good music.

Unfortunately, JARVIS had a tendency to shut it off without warning. “Come on, J, what happened to ‘the whole day uninterrupted’?”

“Sir, I would advise you check the news,” JARVIS said.

“It’s another Mandarin attack, isn’t it? See, I know already,” Anton said. The television turned on to a channel showing a smoky, fiery ruin. “Well, looks like I’m watching the news then.”

He squinted at the screen. “Hang on, that’s—that’s right by here.” Wow, his music must have been loud if he hadn’t noticed that. Looking outside, he could see the smoke and fire. The scene of the explosion was a fair distance away, but from Stark Tower he could see pretty far. On the television, people were being pulled out of the wreckage on stretchers. One man passed particularly close to the cameras, letting Anton get a good look at his face.

It was Clint.

His phone was ringing. “Are you watching the news right now?” Natasha asked the moment he picked it up.

“That was Clint,” Anton said.

“Anton, where are you? We’ve been looking for you for hours,” she said.

“Was that Clint? Please tell me it wasn’t Clint,” he said.

“That was Clint,” she confirmed. “They’re taking him to the hospital. I’m in the ambulance with him.”

“Is he okay?” He pressed the phone to his ear with one hand, grabbing his backpack with the other and running into the elevator. Normally so fast, today it felt slower than a turtle.

“He was caught closer to the edge of the explosion, but that’s not saying much given the strength of it. We’ll see when we get to the hospital. I’ll send a car to pick you up.”

“I’m at Stark Industries,” he said.

“So that’s where you were. The car’s nearby at least. Don’t disappear this time.”

The SHIELD-issued car pulled up to the curb shortly, and then made its way through the traffic to the hospital. He got quite a few stares running in; seeing a teenager throwing himself out of a van and sprinting full-throttle into the hospital wasn’t something often seen, especially not with someone whose face was plastered on magazines and television as often as his was.

Natasha was sitting by Clint’s bed, where Phil should have been. One parent dead and one in the hospital. What did that leave him with? Maria Stark, who couldn’t bear to talk to him any more than she had to?

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

He left, that’s what he did. He hated hospitals anyways. Swarms of reporters were waiting for him outside, shoving their cameras and microphones into his face, but one got right in front of him and said. “So, if you’re really Iron Man, what do you have to say about the recent attack?”

“That’s my dad in there. What the fuck do you think I have to say?” he said. The man didn’t move. “Fine. I’ll tell you what I have to say. I’m going to find the Mandarin, and when I do, he’s going to wish he’d never even thought of setting off a bomb. I don’t take personal attacks lightly, and I have a lot of resources at my disposal to make him regret it.”

If anything, that little outburst just made the reporters swarm even more. He jumped out the bathroom window in order to get the school in the morning, and showed up disheveled and dirty.

Peter glanced at him. “Rough morning?”

“You can say that again.” Anton adjusted his backpack and strode into school, Peter hot on his heels.

“I saw what you said on TV,” Peter said.

“If you ask me about that, so help me, I will take a page of out Flash’s book and shove you into a locker to shut you up,” Anton said.

After that, the rest of the day was just blissful silence. Especially once he’d turned off his phone. Natasha kept texting him to ask if he’d done anything stupid. He hadn’t. Yet. She probably had someone waiting for him at Stark Industries and another agent keeping an eye on his house, though, so he chose the absolute last thing he would want to do in any other situation.

He went to career day.

Even Peter acknowledged that this was stupid. “Don’t you already have a job?”

“Yep,” he said, pointing at the Stark Industries table. “Right over there.”

“Are you going to help them out or something?”

“Absolutely not.” He led Peter, instead, to the absolute opposite of the room. Where, incidentally, Advanced Idea Mechanics was waiting. Brilliant. He’d wanted to blow off some steam.

Nonchalantly, he strolled up to the table and picked up one of their products, a little vial of liquid. “What’s this supposed to be? Killian, right?”

“That would be Extremis,” Killian replied. His smile looked like it had frozen in place upon spotting him.

“Oh, right. Pepper explained it to me,” Anton said. She hadn’t, but whatever. “What’s it do again? It didn’t strike me as that important. I kinda forgot.”

Killian looked ready to sprout fangs and poison glands and strike. “It regenerates the human body and brings it to the peak of physical perfection, granting superhuman strength, resources, and endurance.”

“So you’re basically another wannabe Abraham Erskine trying his hands at the super soldier serum. I bet it sucks.” He grinned up at Killian and twirled the vial around in his hands.

“What did you say?” Killian asked slowly and quietly.

Anton grinned up at him. “I said, I think it sucks. I bet I could do better.”

“I’d like to see you try.” Killian slapped a business card down at the table. “Advanced Idea Mechanics. Show us what you think you can do.”

“You’re on.” Anton tossed the vial at Killian and turned on his heel. He still had to avoid Natasha lest he be dragged to his therapist, but hey, at least he had something to do now. “Say, Peter, wanna have a sleepover? We can do science.”

Peter’s aunt, luckily, seemed overjoyed at the prospect of guests when Peter called her. “It’s been ages since I’ve had a friend over,” he explained.

“Hey, I’ve never even been to a friend’s house. You’ve got one up on me here,” Anton said.

“It makes sense for you though. I mean, I’d think your parents would be really overprotective,” Peter said. “I figured that was why we didn’t hang out outside of school.”

“Didn’t know people did that until I recently found myself with a lot of time and started watching stupid teen movies,” Anton said. Not sleeping left you with a lot of time to kill.

“At least you didn’t know you were missing out on anything.”

They safely avoided running into Flash—Anton didn’t really want to deal with him at the moment—and made their way to Peter’s house.

His aunt turned out to be nice and a good cook, and his uncle seemed pretty cool too. “You’re lucky, man,” he told Peter when they were up in his room.

Peter frowned. “What, aren’t your parents nice?”

“Clint’s in the hospital,” Anton said. “That’s why I asked to come over.”

“But that’s just your adoptive dad, right? What about your mom?”

Hang on. Right. Peter had never actually met his parents, and Anton had never mentioned them. The press certainly hadn’t noticed; Clint and Phil were good at staying out of the spotlight, and people liked to focus more on his relationship with the Stark family than his real family. “My other dad died last year.”

Peter looked up from where he’d been mournfully eyeing the history textbook. “Wait, what?”

Anton studiously kept his eyes on his math book. “Phil died and Clint’s in the hospital.”

“Right.” Peter swallowed loudly. “You never told me.”

“It was during the Battle of New York. I had bigger issues.” Like being in the hospital and almost dying.

“Still. You could’ve at least told me your dads were gay,” Peter said.

“Didn’t see how it was anyone’s business. They’re private people,” he said. “I never had a reason to tell you.”

“I’d think that being friends would be enough,” Peter said.

“Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean I’m obligated to spill my life story to you,” Anton said. Peter looked away, and Anton closed his textbook with a sigh. He wasn’t getting anywhere. “I’m going to bed. Tell your aunt thanks for dinner.”

When they woke up in the morning, he’d be long gone, on his way to Advanced Idea Mechanics, where Aldrich Killian waited.

Well, first he was met by a woman whose nametag declared her to be Maya Hansen, but then he was led to the lab, where Aldrich Killian waited.

The man got right to business and waved to a station where a computer had been set up, linked directly to a vial of Extremis. “Extremis has a lot of code behind it,” Killian said. “I suggest you get to work.”

Anton took one look at the code behind Extremis, which seemed to be based on nanites, decided it was terrible, and set about rewriting all but the basics. The more he looked, the weirder it got. There was something about the ability to raise external temperatures in there and regenerating limbs, but something about the virus seemed to have a side-effect of sometimes also raising the user’s temperatures to dangerous levels and making them extremely volatile, so he decided to nix all of that and add in something actually useful. In his opinion, the peak of human perfection wouldn’t be the ability to breathe fire or something, but something more like being able to easily communicate with technology. Now there was something actually relevant to modern society. The user probably wouldn’t be able to survive the changes necessary to make that possible, but hey, it was fun to fool around with.

Playing around with extremis was fun enough that he kept at it for the entire day, while Killian grew more and more impatient behind him. Finally, long past when the sun had set, he sat back and stretched. “Well, the original thing was basically crap, but it was fun to play with.”

Killian picked up the modified version of Extremis and held it up, letting the pale light shine through it. “You know, at first this wasn’t personal. I was just going to do what I needed to do so that a certain benefactor would continue funding my company, but . . .  well, you’re a spoiled, arrogant brat. And I don’t handle spoiled brats well, let alone those who think they can accomplish in a day what it took my company over ten years to accomplish. Of course, we won’t know how well you really did until we test it.”

Anton jerked in the seat as Killian jabbed the needle into his neck and pressed down. “You—!”

Killian smiled. “Enjoy the ride, Mr. Romanov. There’s a small chance you’ll survive, but I doubt it. Extremis has never been tested on children, after all. Who knows what strain it will put on your body. I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure, but we’d both know that was a lie.”

His mouth kept moving, but all Anton heard was static. His throat felt like he was screaming at the top of his lungs, but all he heard was that inescapable, buzzing static until even that was gone.

The next thing he heard was the soft murmur of voices. Automatically, his hand went to the knife he was still in the habit of keeping on his person at all times, and he reflexively slashed the space in front of him. Fabric ripped, and he found himself staring up at the inside of a van from inside a body bag. He turned his head to the side and saw two men there, but they hadn’t noticed he was awake.

Good.

He slashed one’s throat quickly and then held knife to the driver’s throat. “Pull over, and you won’t end up like your friend over there.”

Threats: one of the most effective ways to get what you wanted. The employee was scared enough that he obeyed immediately and took off running as soon as they’d stopped. Anton took a moment to dump the other employee on the ground with a note to SHIELD attached before taking a look at the GPS.

Apparently he was in Florida. Just outside of Miami, to be exact. Wonderful. At least he knew where he’d come from; he might as well start over there. He had never driven in his life, but he was willing to give it a try.

“Now, how does this thing work?”

Information flooded his brain. Steering wheel, engine, piston, GPS, four-wheel, automatic shift—anything and everything to be found about the car on the Internet. He bent over the steering wheel, gasping for breath, as the information flashed through his brain in an instant and left just as quickly.

Extremis. Had to be.

After concentrating for a moment, he managed to pull up an instructional video, and kept it playing in the background as he tried not to task. Now this put multitasking to a new level. “If only JARVIS could see me now,” he said, and then a voice in his head said, “Sir?”

He’d almost forgotten JARVIS was a computer program. Cool. He could talk to JARVIS in his head. “How’s it hanging, J?”

“Agent Barton has woken up and is most concerned for your safety, sir. I would recommend contacting him at once.”

A bit of testing showed that the communications link he’d fiddled with worked as well, so he quickly sent a text before focusing more of his attention on not careening off the road. “Done and done. Tell me, where am I going, and is Aldrich Killian there?”

“Records do show Mr. Killian traveling to Miami,” JARVIS confirmed.

“Excellent. That’s all I need to know. Hey, tell the folks at SHIELD to get their asses in gear, all right? You’d think I was an agent by the way I keep going. I am on a _roll_ today,” he said. Well, he’d gotten injected with a dangerous Super Soldier Serum knockoff by a guy who’d dumped him in a body bag afterwards, but hey, that was something at least. And now he was learning how to drive a van while on his way back to said guy, which was even better.

Then he ended up at a mansion. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Aldrich Killian’s sexy, sexy winter getaway.”

Of course after saying that he opened the door and found a couple of girls playing ping pong in their underwear. He blinked. “Wow, not half bad. I gotta hand it to the guy: he knows how to party.” The girls shrieked and ran into a bedroom, out of which emerged a man that was definitely not Aldrich Killian.

“You’re the Mandarin.” Killian was working with the Mandarin. Right. He could really use his armor right about now. As it was, he fell into his basic defensive stance, knife at the ready should the Mandarin choose to attack.

Anton stared when he did the exact opposite. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” the man exclaimed in a voice that was definitely not the Mandarin’s. It also, to his experienced ears, sounded rather drunk. “Watch where you’re pointing that.”

“You’re the Mandarin,” he said. “You’re not exactly what I expected.”

“Well, actors usually aren’t. Trevor Slatterly.” The Mandarin held out a hand to shake, but pulled back when he remembered Anton’s knife.

Trevor Slatterly.  Of course. “You’re an actor. Who hired you?”

“Oh, you know.” He waved a hand a bit. “That CEO. The blond one. A bit sketchy looking? Very good pay though.”

Anton took a look around the room. Booze, drugs, and condoms. Used condoms. “Right. So, where is Killian?” He held up his knife threateningly, only for it to be yanked up and behind his back.

“Tsk, tsk,” Killian said. His breath was hot on Anton’s neck. “Didn’t your parents ever tell you little boys shouldn’t play with knives?”

“Didn’t anyone tell you my parents weren’t exactly model citizens?” He dropped the knife and let it clatter to the ground as he turned towards Killian, going for a punch with the other hand. He’d give anything for his armor—Killian’s eyes were sparking gold and his skin was glowing, which couldn’t mean anything good—but he was going to go for it nonetheless.

Lucky that his armor fitted itself around his body right as his fist connected with Killian’s face. The unsuspecting man was knocked backwards, allowing it to cover the arm that had been pinned before. Seemed that the link to the armor worked as well. Cool. He didn’t need to speak to JARVIS to control the suit, now, although the AI was still with him in the suit, backing him up and keeping an eye on the things he couldn’t. The rest was all up to him now. When he swung his fist into Killian’s and swept the other man’s arms out from under him, none of that was JARVIS interpreting his movements. That was all him.

Then it turned out that Killian could set things on fire with his body, which put a bit of a damper on things.

“So, the Mandarin, that was all you, huh?” Anton asked as he fired a repulsor at Killian’s head while avoiding the spreading flames.

“I had to cover up the failed experiments somehow.” Killian ducked under the repulsor and managed to get his fingernails under the faceplate before Anton fired a unibeam and shot him off. Killian got up only a moment later, unfortunately. Fucking cockroaches. “It’s all just business.”

“Yeah, I don’t think business involves murdering hundreds of people,” Anton said.

“Funny ideology to have when Stark Industries has killed millions,” Killian replied.

Anton kneed him in the balls in response. The man barely even flinched, instead tackling to the ground and pinning him with hands that glowed orange. Anton wiggled under him as the suit heated up until he finally managed to slam his head into Killian’s and knock him off.

“Off, off, off,” he muttered, tugging at the scorching metal. It quickly sank down under his skin and into his bones. Creepy, but cool. Killian, seeing the advantage, dashed forward to attack. Anton pivoted and, as Killian grabbed him, shoved his hand fingers first into Killian’s stomach.

“Yeah. I didn’t take out the superstrength bit. Forgot to mention it,” he whispered as Killian’s eyes and skin went dull. Anton pulled his hand out of Killian’s torso with a squelch that echoed through the silent mansion.

His arm was still dripping blood when SHIELD helicopters arrived on the scene.

“I’m okay,” he said as Natasha ran over to him, followed closely by Steve. “Not my blood.”

Steve wrinkled his nose at the sight of Killian on the ground. “Right. Who’s that? And did you _stab_ him through the stomach with your _arm_?”

“Yeah, well, you gotta do what you gotta do. The guy was behind the Mandarin. Turns out the guy on TV is just an actor. Wild, right? He’s also the CEO of Advanced Idea Mechanics and created another thing kind of like the Super Soldier Serum. Not gonna lie, I totally made it better. I rocked that fight! ”

Natasha smacked him over the head. “No celebrating. Clint has been out of his mind with worry since he’d heard you’d vanished. Hospital, now.”

He submitted with only marginal grumbling, and allowed the doctors to draw blood and wet their pants over the Extremis virus. Clint insisted that if he had to stay in the hospital longer Anton did too, so he curled up in the other bed in Clint’s room and set about looking through their hospital records.

Extremis was pretty handy in that way. He just laid back and closed his eyes and went through their computers, following the information that was constantly being updated and shared. Barton this, Romanov that, Barton this, Romanov that, Coulson this—hold up. That wasn’t right. He furrowed his brow and chased after that bit of information, dragging up the other files related too it.

When he reached the root file, he shrieked, “Motherfucker!” and was out of bed and out the door in an instant. He was pretty sure he gave some nurses heart attacks, and from the sound of it Clint was going to ground him for an eternity, but he had to make sure the files were right.

He screeched into the room listed on the files and slammed the door behind him, breathing heavily. On the bed, Phil looked up from a book of crossword puzzles and smiled as if he’d been expecting Anton all along. “You’re not dead.”

“Of course not,” Phil said. “It’s been touch and go, but I’m fine now. Come here, I haven’t seen you in months.”

Anton sank onto the bed, grinning like an idiot, and buried his head in Phil’s shoulder like he was a kid that’d just been yanked out of Russia again. The door opened once more and he heard Clint breathe, “Phil,” before he joined them on the bed, Anton pressed up in between them.

“You two are acting awfully dramatic,” Phil laughed. “I’m fine.”

“Fury told us you were dead,” Clint growled.

“That’s news to me.” Ooh, ice-cold agent voice. Fury was in for it. “It was close, but I’m fine. I have a fancy new scar to add to my collection, but that’s about it.”

“I’ll have to examine it in detail once we’re alone,” Clint said.

Phil smacked his head gently. “Quiet, you, we have an audience.”

“Yeah, and your ‘audience’ does not want to know what you guys do in the dark. I stabbed someone through the stomach with my bare hands today. All I want to do is sleep.”

Somehow, the bed was big enough to fit them both. Anton figured it had something to do with Clint and Phil being so wrapped up in each other they might as well have been one person. As they talked, he shut his eyes and drifted to sleep.

“I think I missed something.”

“You missed a hell of a lot, old man. Pretending to be dead for a few months will do that. You can think of it as payback for those months I spent as a single dad. Let me tell you: most stressful months of my life. I am so glad you’re going to be back at home again.”

“Fury’s giving me a new team to lead, you know.”

“. . . Motherfucker.”

***

“Morgan Stark.”

A file landed heavily in front of Anton, who paused his videogame to flip through it. “Howard’s nephew, right?” His biological cousin. “What about him?” he asked Phil.

“Turns out he was one of the ones funding AIM,” Phil said. “He offered Killian a large sum of money to get you out of the picture.”

“I thought he was seriously in debt though. How’d he manage that?” Just looking at Morgan’s financial report in the file made him wince.

“He borrowed money from some unsavory types. Now his investment in AIM flopped, though, he has no way to pay them back, so that isn’t going to end well for him. He’s dropped off the radar for now, but let’s just say it’s not SHIELD’s first priority to fine him,” Phil said. Anton had a feeling that whoever else was looking for Morgan was going to do a lot worse than SHIELD would have.

“Vindictive,” he said, putting aside the file. “I like it.”

“Maria Stark apologized for her family’s involvement,” Phil said.

“She say anything else?” He reached over and buried his hands in Lucky’s fur.

Phil shook his head. “SHIELD doesn’t want to spread your involvement in the Red Room, so they told her Tony was used for cloning experiments that eventually created you. That’s a lot to take in, especially when she was still holding out hope that her son was alive after all these years. She’s not ready to talk to you yet. Do you want to see her?”

He shook his head. “Not really. I’d rather see Yakov. Do you know if that’s okay yet?”

“There, at least, I have some good news. SHIELD psychiatrists have said he’s okay, and Steve and Natasha talked to him and said he was okay. Well, as okay as he’s going to be for a while. He’s been asking after you.”

After that, a fiery tornado couldn’t have stopped him from going to SHIELD. Yakov wasn’t on the helicarrier anymore, but had been moved to a room on the ground base just as depressing as the one Anton had first been placed in.

“You know, I think a funeral home would be more cheerful than this,” he said, picking up the lone book on the bed and setting it down again.

Yakov looked up at him seriously. “The man I killed. He was a friend of yours.”

They were getting right into the serious stuff, then. “You’ve killed plenty of my friends over the years, Yakov. Hell, I’ve killed plenty of my friends. I’m used to it.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Yakov said.

He shrugged. “Probably not. That doesn’t make it your fault.”

“That doesn’t make me regret it any less,” Yakov reported.

Anton sighed. “Listen, Yakov—”

“James,” he interrupted. “It’s James.”

“Right. James. Gotcha. Listen, I’m not blaming myself for the things the Red Room made me do, and you shouldn’t either. It’s over. It’s in the past. I’ve put it all behind me, and you should too.”

Yakov stared down at his hands. “I guess that’s where we’re different, Anton.”

Anton looked at him, didn’t see a man to be feared and admired. He saw someone tired and old, back bent and head down. As he turned to leave, he said, “You know, I loved you to death when I was a kid.”

“Don’t,” Yakov said. That was it. Just that.

Anton slammed the door shut behind him and stormed off, but a hand grabbed his wrist and pulled him back. “Did Bucky say anything to you?” Steve asked worriedly.

Anton yanked his arm away. “He didn’t say shit.”

James. Bucky. “Someone’s running from the past,” he scoffed to himself. Maybe, once, Yakov had been that person, but going back was hard if not impossible. He knew that as well as anyone who’d been taken in to the Red Room and subjected to their particular form of care.

When he’d first sat down in his room and stared down at the blood test Bruce had given him, with its long list of results but only one he was interested in at the moment, he’d briefly considered calling himself Tony and coming clean to people. He’d thought better of it only a moment later. People expected things of Tony Stark, and he just wasn’t that person. Apparently, Yakov still hoped he could be James. Maybe he could be. Maybe the past would come crashing down on his head. Who could really tell, at this stage?

Anton, at least, knew that nothing good would come of masquerading around as Tony Stark. He was Anton Romanov. He was an ex-Red Room operative who came home every day to his two dads and dog and fought regularly on a team of superheroes. He knew exactly where he came from, but more importantly than that, he knew where he’d been and where he was now. Everything else was just noise.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to borrow some aspects of extremis from the comics for this one. Anyways, thanks for reading, and thanks for all your lovely comments.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this was meant to be something short and it promptly turned into a monster fic. No idea how that happened; it just kept growing. Still, it was meant to be fun and pretty self-indulgent, and that's what it ended up being. I wrote it quickly, but I'll edit it and try to eliminate any errors as I put it up.


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